Mercenary Medicine
by J. K. Baduini
Summary: Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine

**Rating:** T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Many thanks are due to SixthClone and Elemental, my much-cherished beta readers and eternal cheerleaders.

* * *

><p>The battle had been joined in a canyon, a long craggy gash in the raw rock of this barren world. The evidence of it was ample- stone walls charred by weapons fire, the smell of spilled energon, the faint tang of electrochemical discharge that was characteristic of Cybertronian bodies under stress. This was a new planet and a new battlefield. It was also numbingly familiar.<p>

Knock Out made his way cautiously along the top of the cleft in the rock, his distal perceptive systems tuned to the highest sensitivity his processor could handle as he scanned for traps. All of the signs of the fighting were recent, but he wasn't picking up anything that indicated things left behind. It seemed as if both sides had quit the field entirely in their retreat.

It wasn't that surprising. It didn't look like there was anything here worth fighting over at all, much less worth leaving behind traps to foil scavengers. As far he could tell, there wasn't anything worth fighting over on the whole damn planet. It was a lifeless hunk of _rock_.

Ah well. It certainly didn't matter to him what brought the war here. He was sure he'd get the whole sordid story as soon as he checked in with the local combat unit, whether he cared to hear it or not.

He wouldn't be checking in there until he was done here, though, and once he'd ascertained that there wasn't anything defensive and nasty waiting for him, he descended from the cliffs. He took his time picking his way down the steep slope of cracked gravel that bounded one end of the canyon, treading carefully. Gravel could wreak havoc on the paintjobs of the unwary, and Knock Out wasn't in the mood to get his feet dinged right now.

Besides, it wasn't like he was urgently needed below. There was only scrap and spilled energon down there.

And speaking of scrap, what a lode he'd found here. Accustomed to scrounging for the least handfuls of torn-away plating and loose gears in the dirt, the multiple corpses he'd tagged down here promised to be quite the find.

Despite his excitement, though, Knock Out still approached slowly, and he still sifted up his handfuls of torn scrap as he came. Corpses were rare, and they were rare for a reason. There weren't nearly as many Cybertronians left to fight this war as there once had been, and those who still survived tended to be canny warriors. Old soldiers were hard to kill, hard enough that the sprawling battlefields covered in scores of the honorable dead were very much a thing of the past. It was hard to loot corpses for parts when corpses had become so rare, and even the Autobots had started to resign themselves of late to the necessity of reclaiming their dead as a vital source of scrap.

So why had both sides left so many bodies here? It was suspicious to say the least.

His sensors weren't turning up anything particularly noteworthy, though. No matches to known cybertoxins, no evidence of plague, still no hint of a hidden trap to sabotage an unwary scavenger. Just five sizable piles of scrap, to all appearances ready for the stripping.

Knock Out paced cautiously back and forth, giving the bodies a wide berth while he scanned and analyzed, but still didn't turn up anything. He knew he should remain wary, but it was hard in the face of so much nothing. Down that road lay paranoia. After all, if he couldn't trust his sensors, what could he trust?

Caching the meager handfuls of scrap he'd already scrounged up, Knock Out finally walked over to the nearest of the corpses.

The slender form was crumpled on its side, dust and damage from the fight dulling a bright yellow-and-chrome paintjob. There was a Decepticon sigil stamped on one upturned shoulder, important only because it meant he'd have to tread cautiously when he checked in with the local combat unit. Allegiance didn't matter one way or the other to Knock Out once he started collecting parts, but it was generally for the best not to aggravate survivors if he could help it. The teams out here were always tough, but it didn't mean they weren't close-knit. Decepticon grief, Knock Out knew well, rarely manifested openly, and losing one member could render the whole group unpredictable.

Knock Out sunk his fingers into the mech's open shoulder joint and rolled it over, critical optics noting the significant chunk of missing chest and shoulder. That explained that, didn't it? It was an unfortunate wound, but there was still plenty of good raw material here to work with.

He wanted a look at all of them before he started on any of them, though, so he straightened up and moved on. The next two mechs, one red and the other black, lay tangled together. There was a neat, cauterized hole through the center of the black chassis, right over the spark chamber; the hole through the red one was larger, messier, and had taken out a lot more than just the spark.

Both of these were Decepticons too; it seemed his side hadn't fared too well in this particular engagement. He was _definitely_ going to have to tread carefully when he checked in at the base, after a defeat like this.

The next mech was _another_ Decepticon, the largest of the lot, black and purple and wholly intact- well, except for his head, anyway. Knock Out wasn't going to be able to salvage any usable parts from _that_ mess.

The big body had fallen across the fifth mech of the group. It wasn't until Knock Out had managed to lever the black and purple body off the blue and white one underneath it that he realized there was something profoundly different about this particular corpse.

It wasn't a corpse.

The mech's energy signature was weak enough that just having another body on top of it was enough to mask the signal, but it was unmistakably present. Whoever he was, this mech was still alive, and if that wasn't remarkable enough, he seemed to be mostly intact. Knock Out had to shove the big corpse the rest of the way off and turn the blue and white mech to confirm that he didn't have any external injuries, but he seemed whole. A little dented, but whole.

Just because he couldn't see the damage didn't mean it wasn't there, though. The mech was totally unresponsive, even when Knock Out used his nimble fingers to pry into his cranial interface and attempted to trigger a hard reboot.

Processor damage then, in all probability, and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it out here. Knock Out clicked the panel closed and sat back, monitoring for a few long moments. The signature of the other mech's spark remained faint but steady- not a good sign, but not a bad one, either. His spark wasn't beating, which indicated that all of his core systems were dormant, and that was a Very Bad sign, but he didn't seem to be actively deteriorating either.

"Sorry, big guy," Knock Out said cheerily, patting the unconscious mech on the shoulder and rising to his feet. "You're going to have to wait a little longer."

An Autobot medic probably would have tended the patient first, but Knock Out was more pragmatic than that. The other four bodies here were too tempting a lure to pass up. If he took the time to haul the survivor back to his ship and wake him up, he ran the risk of the bodies getting claimed by someone else before he could strip them. Letting valuable resources potentially fall into the hands of the enemy was unconscionable, and letting his allies get to them before he had a chance was just bad business. Spare parts and his ability to install them were the most valuable commodity he had to bargain with, and he'd be an idiot to pass up this much loot.

With hardly a regret, Knock Out turned away and set to work breaking down the bodies of dead mechs into piles of scrap metal and spare parts.

* * *

><p>Knock Out had long ago perfected the art of hauling scrap on his own, and an art it really was. Bringing in his ship low and slow under radar cover, finding suitable ground to park it on, maneuvering the freight sledge from ship to site- all tasks geared to a team of mechs working in tandem, all tasks that he had to handle on his own. His ship carried a crew of one, and Knock Out liked it that way. Better to deal with the hassle of operating independently than the danger of letting himself be tied down with a combat unit.<p>

It took multiple trips to load up the entire haul, even with the scrap heaped to the maximum tolerance of the lifters on his sledge. Knock Out certainly didn't resent the labor, though; this stuff was going to serve him well. Spare parts were getting harder and harder to come by with each stellar cycle that passed, especially since the manufacturing facilities that had once supplied them had been left behind on Cybertron. He knew all too well that the only person he could rely on for medical supplies was himself, and that his supplies were his best bargaining chips.

After all, his medical skills might be useful, but there was only so much he could do without a sufficient supply of replacement parts to work with. He was only as valuable as the materiel he brought with him in his travels.

It was only after his untidy stacks of parts from the bodies of the dead Decepticons were stashed in the hold on his ship that he went back for the survivor. Again, an Autobot probably would have transferred the living mech before the dead ones, but not Knock Out. If he had to cut and run before he'd finished loading, he'd much rather run with a ship full of parts and leave behind a mech than be stuck with someone who was potentially terminal and sacrifice his heaps of new parts.

Getting the unresponsive mech up onto the sledge alone proved to be an ordeal. Knock Out managed it, but only after a clever maneuver with a makeshift lever and a very unfortunate gouge to the plating of his hip. Quietly muttering some very creative imprecations and favoring the injured hip, he hauled the mech back up the slope of scree to his ship. The sledge's lifters, taxed beyond their usual output by the day's labor, whined as he dragged it up into the hold. It was starting to shudder under the weight of the mech and Knock Out had to hurry to dock it against the wall before the electromagnetics gave out.

He didn't bother to offload his erstwhile passenger. He was much more interested in getting his ship to some cover, or at the very least up into the atmosphere- he'd been at this for a long time, and knew his time had to be running out. The fact that he'd managed to go undetected this long was nothing short of a-

A warning popped into the wireless uplink HUD he was running with the ship. Simultaneously, up in the cockpit, an audible alarm started blare.

"So much for that," he muttered. And so much for securing his survivor, too; the straps holding him to the sledge were going to have to suffice. Knock Out locked it into its dock and rushed himself up through the hatch to the upper deck of the ship, his injured hip forgotten as he keyed open the cockpit and threw himself down into the pilot's seat. Opening the port in the back of his helm, he jacked in the cranial cable, then leaned back in the seat and slid his hands into the control interfaces. Docking in was by now a familiar feeling, but bypassing the usual interface confirmation routine and plunging himself straight into the ship's systems made him shiver. He had _not_ been programmed for this, but that didn't change the fact that right now he had to manage it anyway.

The alarm cut as soon as he'd connected in, but the warning was still flashing, alerting him that the ship's systems had been queried by enemy frequencies. Autobots, then, and Knock Out swore again, initiating flight systems and activating the engines. He didn't bother to respond; he knew the non-response would paint him Decepticon as surely as any transmission, and didn't much feel like bantering with the enemy, especially not when the enemy was apparently capable of taking down five mechs at once. Banter wasted time, and he didn't dare run the risk of them catching him on his own.

Reaching over into the ship's electronic communications systems, he activated the scramblers instead.

He checked the engines—still warming up and just starting to run preflight tests. Knock Out hesitated for an instant, just long enough for another Autobot ping to register on his systems. He overrode the tests.

"Come on," he muttered uselessly, hands twitching in the cabling of the control cradles. A full crew could get this ship prepped and off the ground in a fraction of a cycle but Knock Out, operating it on his own, had never been able to manage. The systems were just too big for one mech to handle efficiently.

There was really no time to dwell on it now, then. He brought up the ship's distal scanners, the display blossoming across his vision. They'd been running automatically, casting their perceptive nets as they tried to localize the Autobot signals, but nothing was turning up. There weren't even interference spots. Either they were far enough away that he didn't need to be this worried, or they had scramblers of their own to keep him blind.

No way was he going to bet on the former.

He checked the engines again and swore. He knew there was nothing wrong with them but it seemed like they were taking long, too damn long, to clear for take-off. His communications module was conspicuously empty- the Autobots had stopped trying to contact him. A naïve mech might hope that meant that they'd gone away, but Knock Out knew better.

"Come on," he said again, this time pleading, and took down more of the failsafes meant to keep the ship on the ground until its pilots were certain nothing was going to error out around them in the air.

There was no time for failsafes, and the only certainty that mattered was the certainty that the enemy was coming and he couldn't be caught here alone.

Mentally, he toggled the ignition, but only two of the three engines caught. He swore again as a new display started flashing: Autobot signatures approaching the other side of the canyon.

"_Come on_!" he snapped, and this time the ship responded, the final engine igniting. The whole vehicle bucked as it switched immediately into take-off mode, and then there was the unnerving sensation of wind and pressure experienced through proximal tactors that weren't his own. He was moving.

Thank Primus, he was moving.

Weapons-fire erupted beneath him as he banked his ship away from the canyon, but his scanners reported none of the tell-tale signatures of ground-to-air capable weaponry. They might be shooting at him, but they weren't carrying the artillery they needed to shoot him _down_, so after the initial flare of alarm he realized he didn't have to be worried. The Autobots hadn't gotten him yet.

Pointing the nose of his ship towards the upper atmosphere, he kicked in the thrusters and got his aft out of there.

He was running, yeah. But he _always_ ran, and they _never_ got him.

He wasn't a mech to mess with a system that worked.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong>: Thanks for reading! Next chapter coming soon!


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Many thanks are due to SixthClone and Elemental, my much-cherished beta readers and eternal cheerleaders.

Thank you also to everyone who read the first chapter, and especially everyone who commented! Feedback is what keeps me writing when the story isn't cooperating, and is much appreciated. 

* * *

><p>In retrospect, Knock Out really should have realized that the four dead mechs and their fifth nearly dead counterpart represented the bulk of this particular Decepticon combat unit. It was unusual for teams to boast more than four or five mechs unless there was an extensive and well-defended emplacement to support them; their ranks had been thinned too much by both Autobot attrition and their own strict hierarchy, and there just weren't as many Decepticons these days as there once had been. Add into that the frequent necessity of Decepticon groups out here in the fringes to move and relocate, and big units just weren't common.<p>

The only response he got when he pinged the base for clearance to land was an automated acknowledgment. Normally there should have been someone on the comm to confirm his approach manually, but here there was no one. Just silence on the other end of the line, despite his repeated requests for a response.

It was very possible, he realized, that he was carrying the last living member of this particular squad in the hold of his ship.

Well, he couldn't circle up here forever, and he wouldn't be able to get out of this system without energon and fuel. With the mental equivalent of a flick of his fingers, he activated a series of particularly handy subroutines and sat back in the pilot's cradle to let the programming work. A mech of his rank _really_ shouldn't have had access to codes like the ones he'd just beamed down to the base below; he'd bought the package for an exorbitant fee from a very slick arms dealer not long after he'd broken from his assigned unit and struck out on his own. The purchase had nearly beggared him, but he'd never regretted it.

It didn't take long for his ship's systems to bypass the automated failsafes and get clearance to land. Knock Out couldn't help but be quite pleased with himself as he guided it down for the landing. If his survivor really was the last remaining mech in the squad, he'd have free run of the place. It would be nice to be able to stock up without having to bargain dearly for everything.

He powered down his ship and disengaged, first mentally from its systems and then physically from the cradle. He paused for a few moments in the cabin behind the bridge to check on his hip, then dropped down into the hold. His patient was right where he'd left him, the big form hardly even shifted in the restraints, and the faint signal from his spark still hadn't deteriorated.

"You can hold out for me a little longer, can't you?" Knock Out asked, smiling broadly and patting the insensate body on the nearest available piece of plating. "Just a quick look around, I promise, then I'll get to work on you."

He pulled a datapad out of a storage slot and brought up the ship's manifest. These days, it was as much a list of what he needed as of what he had on board, and he was quite excited about the possibility of finally checking off some of the items on it after ransacking this base.

His excitement was probably why he wasn't paying attention to his personal scanners as he keyed open the hatch with one hand and strode out into the hangar.

Certainly it was why he didn't notice there was actually a mech in there with him until the distinct whine of an energy weapon powering up reaching his audials. The whine was accompanied by words, deep and raspy with static: "Take another step and I blow out your spark."

Knock Out froze, but only for the instant it took him to canvass the room; when he moved, it was to dive behind a haphazard stack of storage crates heaped off to one side. He grunted as he hit the ground, rolling over his shoulder and coming up in a crouch behind the makeshift cover.

The mech swore, but at least he didn't open fire. "State your designation and unit affiliation," he boomed.

"It's logged in your base's Teletraan unit!" Knock Out shot back, not bothering to mask his annoyance. Even one mech present meant he couldn't have his way with the base's supplies, and he didn't appreciate having his elation so aggressively drained away. "Which someone should have been _monitoring_, by the way!"

The other mech laughed sharply. "If no one was monitoring, how did you get in?"

The question threw Knock Out for a loop, but he recovered quickly. "A Decepticon doesn't share his secrets unless he has to," he said, forcing the lilt that usually came so naturally.

There was a grunt from the other mech, but nothing else. No threats, no boasts, no weapons' fire… Knock Out took a risk and rose to his feet, stepping out from behind the crates with both hands showing.

His assailant was leaning heavily against the wall. One hand was still a blaster and that blaster trained on him immediately when he left his cover, but the other was clutched against a very obvious wound in the stranger's side. He was injured. Well, that explained why he hadn't been attending the comm, then. Probably explained why he wasn't being more aggressive right now, too.

"Calm down, my friend," Knock Out said, his voice quiet, his smile broad and as friendly as he could make it. "We're on the same side here, aren't we?" He gestured at the weapon-hand. " Why don't we dispense with this _unpleasantness_, hm?"

The mech bared his dentals in a grimace and forced himself to stand upright, away from the wall. "Why don't you tell me who you are and what you're doing here first?"

"The designation's Knock Out," he said, according the other mech a flourishing bow. "And you happen to be in luck, friend—I'm a doctor."

"I'm not your friend." The other mech's optics—red, of course, but overbright in his dark face and flickering slightly, roamed Knock Out's body. He resisted the urge to preen, though it wasn't difficult; there was no appreciation in the stranger's gaze. "Hn. You're the freelancer."

"My reputation precedes me, I see." Seeing that it was having approximately no effect on the other mech, Knock Out dialed the harmless-and-friendly act back a few notches and stepped up his serious-and-dependable instead. "Looks like you took a nasty hit, there. Care to let me have a look at it?"

Blunt fingers twitched against the wound—ooh, that _had_ to hurt—and the mech scowled at him. "I do my own repairs."

"Of course you do." Knock Out repressed the urge to roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. If the idiot wanted to try to deal with the ragged hole in his side on his own, he was welcome to. He crossed his arms and shrugged. "What now? Not still trying to decide if you want to shoot me, I hope."

Bright optics flicked down to the weapon, the barrel of which had drifted to the floor. There was a moment's hesitation, and then the other mech gave his arm a shake and when it fell to his side it was a hand again. It was a big hand attached to a powerful arm, Knock Out noted with the distracted part of his processor that always and ever would notice things like that. Then again, the mech it was attached to was _massive_, so of course the arm would be big. Every part of him was. It really was a shame that his black and gray paint-job was so damn drab, even a little highlighting could really bring out the most impressive parts of the other's hulking physiology-

Ah, but he wasn't here to offer a cosmetic consultation, now was he? He really couldn't afford to be distracted right now, not even by thoughts of what he could do with a little chrome or bright paint. He put the speculations firmly out of mind.

"Don't need your services here, freelancer," the big mech was saying, waving a hand. The motion was dismissive and very fluid, and his other hand, still pressed against his side, was the only concession he was currently making to his wound. "Why don't you move along, hm?" He was trying to sound casual, but voice was still strained, laced liberally with tell-tale static. He was doing pretty well acting like he wasn't hurting, but Knock Out was too experienced in the art of inflicting pain on others not to be able to recognize the signs of it.

He shrugged again. "No paint off my plating. If you don't want to take advantage of my services, that's your loss. But—" He pivoted on one heel and gestured at the open hatch of his ship. "—I've got something of yours to offload before I go."

That little statement was enough to provoke a more genuine reaction from the other mech, although it was only a puzzled blankness. "…Something of mine?"

"A survivor." Cocking one hand on his hip, he looked back at the big Decepticon. "Blue and white fellow, very striking orange face?"

"Breakdown…" he whispered, his naked surprise obvious. He clamped down on the expression, but only after a moment, and the stiff attempt at indifference wasn't fooling Knock Out. "How?"

"I make a habit of scoping battlefields," Knock Out said, trusting his own attempt at indifference to actually be convincing. He was quite practiced at it, after all. "I see things other mechs miss."

"That's not what I meant." The big Decepticon wasn't looking at him anymore, his optics fixed beyond, on the ramp into the ship. "He shouldn't be alive." He started walking, favoring the leg on the injured side noticeably.

Knock Out stepped into his path and held up his hands, palms out. "Ah. I wouldn't if I were you."

Injured he may have been, but the big mech was still strong enough to sweep Knock Out aside. Trotting along in his wake as the other stalked towards the ship, Knock Out carefully avoided the fine trail of energon droplets he was leaving behind him on the floor. The other mech's systems were laboring audibly as he limped along. The distress was obvious enough that when he pitched over into stasis lock on the ramp, it didn't surprise Knock Out at all.

Well. Wasn't that inconvenient? Getting a mech that large off the ramp and onto a transport sledge by himself was going to be a trial.

At least the big wingnut hadn't managed a look at what else was in the hold before he collapsed. 

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Many thanks are due to SixthClone and Elemental, my much-cherished beta readers and eternal cheerleaders.

Thank you also to everyone who's reading this, and especially everyone who commented! Feedback is what keeps me writing when the story isn't cooperating, and is much appreciated.

The unnamed mech from the last chapter gets an identity in this one, and no one who knows me is surprised.

* * *

><p>When Blackout woke up, he was alone. The first thing he did- before diagnostic scans, before location pings, before even rebooting his optics- was access the private feed that connected him to his Deployer.<p>

The little drone responded right away to Blackout's request, reporting that it was still active and engaging in anti-Autobot patrols and surveillance around the periphery of their base. It followed up immediately with queries of its own, wanting to confirm its reading on Blackout's current location and to reconfirm the last set of orders it had received.

Scorponok, it seemed, was functioning fine.

Blackout told it to keep up its patrol and dismissed the location request, at least for the moment. He wanted to ascertain where he was for himself before he relayed the information to his drone.

Finally booting his optical subroutines, he opened his eyes and sat up. He'd expected the move to trigger a cascade of diagnostic warnings across his internal HUD, but it didn't. He started up his diagnostics and reached down at the same time to probe what should have been a gaping and ragged hole in his side. Instead there was only smooth plating, new and still the color of raw alloy. His internal systems confirmed a moment later what the visual scan had suggested- he'd been repaired.

This explained why he'd woken up in the single room of the base's small, spare medbay, then.

More systems were coming online, one set of subroutines after the other reactivating successfully. He shifted his weight carefully off the medbay slab, closely monitoring the reactions of his body, but everything was reading fine. There was no residual pain, no pulling or stiffness or sluggish reactions, nothing.

Distantly, Blackout felt surprise, and realized that this, too, was a good sign. The medic who'd fixed him up had known enough to leave behind a temporary affective block, the kind of emotional buffer necessary to keep a mech who'd stasis-locked involuntarily from waking up with his systems disarrayed. It was a straightforward procedure, yet Blackout had seen more than one field medic who'd forgotten it take injuries of his own in the process of waking up a patient whose body had stasis-locked on him in the middle of a battle.

Carefully, he got to his feet. The repair held, and Blackout couldn't help a grudging admiration for the work. He wasn't even feeling a twinge, and that Autobot rocket had done a lot of damage. He had been lucky to make it back to the base at all, particularly without support, and he hadn't managed to do much more than clamp off the leaks and disable the local power conduits before that freelancer had hacked his way in.

The freelancer must have done this, Blackout realized, sliding a hand over the repaired plating of his side, and at the same time he realized that the affective block must have degraded the rest of the way. His ripple of irritation as he thought about it was sharp and raw- he'd _told_ the other mech he did his own repairs! He didn't need some slick little stranger's hands mucking around in his internals, particularly when he wasn't conscious for it.

A few cautious steps carried him to the terminal against the wall; a few quick keystrokes logged him into the Teletraan system that controlled the base. According to Teletraan's security feeds, the freelancer was in the hangar with his ship. Disengaging from the terminal, Blackout paused a moment to contact Scorponok again, confirming his location as requested and reiterating that yes, he really did want the drone to keep patrolling.

When he ducked out of the medbay and into the rough-hewn hall, it was to find the freelance medic rounding the corner and coming towards him. The much smaller mech was wiping down his hands distractedly with a rag. He met Blackout's eyes and smiled.

"Up already, are you?" he asked, crossing the distance between them with quick, light steps. "Good. I need your help."

Blackout wasn't interested in helping. He scowled and pivoted on one big foot, trying to crowd the medic against the wall- only to have the other mech neatly duck and dodge right past him. Clawed fingers caught his wrist for an instant and pulled.

"Come on!"

Blackout planted his feet and crossed his arms across his chest. "Don't think so, freelancer. You and I need to have a _conversation_."

An astonishingly put-upon frown creased the other mech's smooth white faceplate. "We can talk after I've figured out what to do with this Breakdown of yours, hm?" The rag moved between his hands again; the medic was meticulously cleaning off his long fingers, his gaze never leaving Blackout's face as he did it. He jerked his head over his shoulder, indicating the hall beyond. "You can manage repairs, I can tell, and you'd know him better than I do. So will you help me?"

There was a very big part of Blackout that wanted to force the 'conversation' anyway, but his sense of duty overrode his own selfish desire to deal a bit of brute violence. Nominally, he was still in charge of this unit, and he knew where his responsibilities lay.

"Hn. He's still alive?"

The freelancer nodded. "For now." He made his rag disappear, turning and taking in the hall behind him with a sweeping gesture. "If you'll follow me?" Reluctantly, Blackout trailed behind him as the other mech led the way back down the hall, passing the medbay but stopping at the next room on, a storage room for Dead End's medical supplies.

He shouldn't have been able to access it. Nearly all medical materiel had been upgraded to medium priority storage, meaning only commanding officers and ranked medical staff were supposed to be able to get at it. Dead End wasn't much of a medic, but was still-

Blackout had to manually arrest that thought. Dead End _hadn't_ been much of a medic. He wasn't much of anything at all anymore, and Blackout was going to have to answer for it. He had been the handler, after all.

Every combiner needed one to be functional in battle. Cognitive attenuation in the combined form was characteristic of gestalt technology. It didn't matter how smart or capable the members of the combiner were individually; when they were fighting as one unit, a discrete mech was necessary to keep them on task and make sure their devastating offensive force remained pointed at the enemy.

His primary role in this unit was—had been—to be the brain that the brainless Menasor needed to fight effectively, and he'd failed catastrophically in that task. The Stunticons were destroyed, by an Autobot weapon Blackout had never encountered before. There was no way he could have anticipated it, but someone was going to have to be held accountable for a loss this monumental, and he was the only candidate. The very thought was enough to make him shiver, which made the spines that hung down his back chime softly together.

Arresting that particular trail of thought too, he hurried after the freelancer. Inside the storage room, Dead End's unorganized heaps of supplies had been disarrayed further, crates and racks shoved aside to make space for the makeshift berth in the center of the room. Breakdown was laid out on it, and actually _seeing_ him was enough to halt Blackout on the threshold.

One of the Stunticons _had_ survived.

The little red medic was already on the other side of the berth, leaning over Breakdown's chest with his head cocked, listening to the systems in the blue chassis. He held the pose for a moment, then shook his head and straightened up.

"I can't get him to reboot," he said, leaning one hand against the berth and looking up at Blackout across it. "All my diagnostics are coming up clean, but none of the usual overrides are working. I even tried manually restarting his core processor , but it didn't take." Long fingers tapped out an annoyed tattoo on the edge of the berth, the freelancer frowning deeply. "I'm out of ideas. His processor's fine, his body's fine, but-"

"Idiot. He lost his gestalt."

That shut the medic up, and the exaggerated expression of shock on his face would have been funny if they hadn't been talking about a dead gestalt. Not just any gestalt, either, but Blackout's. His responsibility, his duty, and he'd failed.

He scowled and turned away, arms folding across his broad chassis. "There were four other mechs on the battlefield where you found him, right?" He didn't wait for a response, talking over the medic's hushed affirmative. "They were a combiner team. He's not waking up because he's suffered a spark trauma greater than you can ever know."

He turned back, but not to look at the freelancer. No, his optics fell to Breakdown, quiet and still on the berth. He looked like he was just recharging, but his energy signature was so weak that Blackout could barely detect it from the doorway.

"I don't know how he survived, but it'd be better if it hadn't." Now he looked up, catching the medic's bright optics. "If you really want to help him, kill him."

And again without waiting for a response, Blackout turned and left the room.

* * *

><p>The massive Decepticon's words seemed to echo in the empty air long after he'd left. It felt like they were trapped in here with Knock Out, echoing and multiplying and threatening to choke his air intakes.<p>

_If you really want to help him, kill him._

Now, Knock Out was very familiar with the concept of mercy. He'd dispatched his share of gravely wounded soldiers, same as any medic; sometimes it was all you could reasonably do. Given the option between quietly killing a comrade and wasting time and resources that he wouldn't get back trying to put him back together- well, sometimes he had to make the pragmatic choice.

But that wasn't the case here. The mech laid out on the berth in front of him wasn't half blown apart, wasn't bleeding energon faster than it could be transfused back into him, didn't have compromised or terminally corrupted systems. He was whole and functioning, except for the part where he wasn't actually functioning.

He would be, though, if only Knock Out could wake him up.

The problem, of course, was that waking him up was far easier said than done. If it was true that this brawny blue Decepticon had been part of a combiner team, and all the rest of said team was currently in disorganized chunks in the hold of Knock Out's ship, then it wasn't a surprise that nothing he'd tried yet had managed to bring him out of it. Knock Out didn't know much about combiners, but he did know that all the members of a gestalt were connected. What happened to one affected all of the others.

"Spark trauma, hm?" Knock Out murmured thoughtfully, seating himself on a crate big enough to bear his weight. The words were heavy in his mouth; it was a diagnosis that Knock Out wasn't equipped to handle. Oh, a trained medic would probably know of some intervention to deal with a case like this, but Knock Out had never trained as a medic. He'd learned his anatomy in body shops and upgrade clinics before the war had been anything more than an agitated movement for equality; everything else he knew about Cybertronian medicine came from his own experiences after he'd enlisted, supplemented by a handful of partly-corrupted datatracks he'd grubbed off of real doctors.

The only reason he could get away with calling himself a doctor now was because most of the legitimate ones, Decepticon and Autobot alike, were long dead.

Knock Out would be the first to admit that he didn't know much about sparks. Bodies he could do, and he wouldn't have made it this far without learning his way around a processor, but sparks? Once sparks got involved, he was out of his league. Luckily, most of the time sparks got involved, medically speaking, things were over and done with before his ignorance could show.

After all, not even the best doctor in the world could fix it if a spark casing cracked or corrupted, especially not these days. There had been a transplant procedure for it before, but it was tricky operation that only the most skilled—and highly paid—doctors, those who had the best equipment, ever bothered to attempt. Knock Out's estimation of his abilities might have been high, but he wasn't delusional enough to think he could pull something like _that_ off.

Beyond that, a successful transplant required a new pureforged spark casing, and pureforged pieces were exceedingly difficult to come by these days. Pureforged pieces of that size and complexity? Forget about it.

None of these musings on spark transplants were helping him to figure out what to do with Breakdown, though. It seemed like a waste to mercy-kill someone who would be fine as soon as he came out of his stasis-lock, but if Knock Out couldn't bring him out of it, he was as good as dead anyway. He might have no choice but to admit defeat...

But not quite yet. There was one thing Knock Out had learned in his time as a body shop jockey that carried over just as well into doctoring, and that was that sometimes the direct route worked where finesse didn't.

Breakdown wasn't waking up because his spark wasn't reacting to the stimuli and signals from his body; it was one of the fundamental symptoms of spark trauma. Knock Out would just have to give his spark something more immediate to react to.

He was on his feet before he could think too hard about what he was about to do. Fingers finding the manual releases around the unconscious mech's chassis, he parted the plating, then hoisted himself up on the berth beside him.

Everything inside the chassis appeared just the same as the last time he'd had a look, when he'd been inspecting the other mech's spark chamber for damage. Even the spark itself was the same pale blue, its weak light glowing thinly out of the casing that housed it. Leaning over the inert mech's broad chest, Knock Out tapped lightly at the chamber.

Just barely, the light emanating from it flickered. A smile tried to steal across Knock Out's face, but he banished it. The fluctuation had been slight enough that he couldn't quite discount the possibility of a sensor glitch.

He tapped again, harder this time, and was rewarded with a reaction that definitely wasn't a glitch of his perceptors. Both the flicker of light and the tingle up his finger were unmistakable.

"Well, let's call that proof of concept, shall we?" he said aloud, allowing himself to smile up at the slack face. "But proof of concept alone isn't going to wake you up, is it?" He patted Breakdown's hip and then got up on his knees beside him.

Leaning out over the inert mech's chassis, he curled the long fingers of one hand into a fist.

"If this doesn't bring you back, my friend, it's the scrap heap for you," he warned the body, and then he cracked his knuckles against the chamber as hard as he could.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Thanks for reading~~


	4. Chapter 4

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Many thanks are due to Elemental, my much-cherished beta readers and eternal cheerleaders, and many more to SixthClone, who basically is my Breakdown. I couldn't write him without here.

Thank you also to everyone who's reading this, and especially everyone who commented! Feedback is what keeps me writing when the story isn't cooperating, and is much appreciated. 

* * *

><p>When Knock Out's systems stabilized, he was sprawled on the floor and the hand he'd used to hit his patient's spark chamber was numb to the elbow. He had not much longer than a decicycle to catalogue all that before there was a rather sizeable shape launching at him with a roar, and his automatic self-defense routines had kicked in and drowned out higher cognition.<p>

Knock Out threw himself to the side just in time to avoid being squashed and was on his feet again an instant later, desperately shaking out the numb hand. His assailant lumbered to his feet, swaying like he was badly overcharged, and it was only then that Knock Out realized the blue and white apparition was Breakdown.

He would have been a lot happier at that if the mech he'd just miraculously managed to reactivate wasn't trying to swing at him with very large fists.

He managed to dodge the blows, but it was a close thing, and there were already crates bumping at his legs. Ducking another flailing swing, Knock Out stepped to the side and vaulted himself up onto the makeshift berth, scrambling over and dropping lightly to the other side.

Apparently, he was moving too quickly for his erstwhile opponent. Breakdown seemed to be having trouble tracking him, his optics focusing slowly and all his movements sluggish and uncertain. He was reacting like a mech suffering from wide-spread systems trauma, which admittedly wasn't that far off from the reality of his condition.

"Damn it," Breakdown mumbled, his words just as slurred as his movements, "will you hold still? I need to hit you."

Knock Out held up his hands, conspicuously empty of weapons, and forced a laugh. It was a little more nervous than he would have liked, but he was counting on the other mech being too disoriented to realize it.

"Now now," he said, "is that any way to treat a doctor? And one on your own side, too!"

The punch was already coming at him from across the table before he'd finished speaking, and he ducked it before his brain even caught up with what his processor had already parsed- that there was a sizable hammer instead of a hand on the end of that arm, extending Breakdown's reach. He scrambled back into the haphazardly stacked cartons of supplies, temporarily sacrificing his maneuverability for the very vital distance between them.

His assailant made no move to follow. The hammer fell to Breakdown's side and the big mech blinked, the sound of his processor in his chassis clearly audible in the sudden quiet of the room.

"...You're a Decepticon?"

Knock Out was quick to nod. "And we're in Decepticon territory. So why don't you put that away and let's talk like rational beings, hm?"

Breakdown twisted the hammer somewhat, staring down at it like he couldn't even remember evolving the weapon. Maybe he couldn't- coming out of stasis in battle mode did strange things to a mech's mind, and apparently the assault on his spark had been enough to override the affective block Knock Out had left in there against this very possibility.

Either that block was actually starting to dampen the other's emotions properly, or Breakdown was starting to calm down- either way, the hammer disappeared and the big frame relaxed a little. "This ain't the canyon," he said, looking around curiously. The motion made him sway slightly. "This is...our base?"

"Well, _your_ base," Knock Out said. The other mech's aggression seemed to have drained away, so he picked his way cautiously back out into the open space between the berth and the crates.

"Right," Breakdown said absently. His eyes tracked back to Knock Out, who for the first time realized how strange they were, blank bright windows in the place of proper optics. "Who're you?"

"I'm Knock Out." He spread his hands. "I'm the doctor who fixed you up."

The strange orange-yellow eyes narrowed. "You? Where's Dead End?"

Before Knock Out had a chance to even attempt an answer, a visible tremor shook Breakdown. The other mech reeled into the makeshift berth, hard enough to rock it, and grabbed at the frame with big fingers to keep himself upright. "Where's... anyone?" He pinned Knock Out in the gaze of his strange optics, his words flat. "Where's my team?"

"They're, ah...offline." There was no point in trying to sweeten it, but it came out tersely; this wasn't exactly news he wanted to deliver.

Breakdown's orbital ridges narrowed into an incongruously quizzical expression. "No," he said, that uninflected flatness still in his voice.

"I'm... sorry," he said awkwardly, not used to having to express condolences. "I know it must be a blow-"

"It's a lie, is what it is. Can't be true," Breakdown interrupted bluntly, shaking his head.

Knock Out had dealt with a lot of strange reactions to being told a comrade or a teammate was dead, but outright denial was rare enough that he was bemused. Weren't the members of combiner teams supposed to be able to detect one another anyway? Shouldn't _he_ know? "...Why not?" he asked.

"'Cause if they were dead, I'd be dead." He said it simply, like a statement of the purest fact. "So what happened?"

Bewildered, Knock Out could only spread his hands. "There was a battle. I don't know any of the details; I came to the field after the fact and found four bodies- and you."

"And I was alive?"

"You... weren't offline," Knock Out said delicately, shrugging. "Stasis-locked with a weak spark signal, so it was close, but-"

"Then I oughta be dead."

Knock Out wasn't used to being interrupted, and having it happen for a second time was enough to render him speechless.

"If they're dead, I should be too," Breakdown insisted. He looked away, hands curling into fists. "It ain't right, me still being alive if they're not." Abruptly, his gaze swung back to Knock Out. "This is your fault, isn't it?"

His voice was still flat, quiet and even, but for the first time there was something distant and unnerving in his otherwise blank stare. Knock Out was suddenly acutely grateful for the affective block that had to be holding the full impact of the loss of his team at bay in the other mech's head. He didn't want to even consider how Breakdown might be reacting if he was in full possession of all his emotional faculties.

It was only because of that block that Knock Out felt safe nodding an affirmative. When he saw Breakdown's eyes narrow dangerously anyway, evasive subroutines in his systems started to boot. He had a very well-tuned flight reflex, and it was telling him that it would be in his best interests to remove himself from this situation as soon as possible.

The door cycled open unexpectedly, startling Knock Out badly enough that his engine gave an audible rev. He recognized Blackout an instant later and throttled himself back down, but it took an effort. As unobtrusively as he could manage, he sidled in the massive Decepticon's direction.

Blackout was so busy staring at Breakdown, he didn't even seem to notice. "You're awake?" he asked, disbelief clearly audible in his voice. Then turned the most blatantly unwelcoming expression on Knock Out that he'd ever seen in his life. "_You._ You did this, didn't you?"

Knock Out had never been asked so accusatorily if he'd been responsible for saving a life, and he didn't like it. He was affronted enough that he forgot he was trying to escape; he planted his feet and drew himself up to his full height. Unfortunately, measured against the other two, even his full height was unimpressive. It wasn't often that Knock Out regretted his rather diminutive stature, but right now he couldn't help but wish he was a little taller, a little broader, a little less _dwarfed_ by these two rather sizable Decepticons.

"Yes," he said, head tilted proudly, "I did." He jabbed a finger at Breakdown, meeting his blank optics defiantly. "I _saved your life_." He turned to Blackout, whose expression was a lot more openly malicious, and refused to flinch. "And I don't see what's wrong with that!"

Blackout scoffed. "That's because you're a moron." He moved into the room, turning towards Knock Out with a litheness belied by his huge size. A trickle of alarm skittered up Knock Out's spinal struts, his flight routines booting back up again as Blackout backed him into a corner between an overfull rack of tools and a massive crate. It took all of his self-control not to flinch when the other mech's big finger poked at his chest. "It wasn't your place to bring him back."

"Don't touch me," Knock Out snapped, batting the finger away from his plating. He looked over at Breakdown, unconsciously seeking validation.

The expected gratitude of a mech who had a new lease on life because of him was completely absent.

Knock Out's attention was jerked back to Blackout when the big mech's hand impacted with the crate behind him, freezing him in place in the corner. Blackout leaned in close. "I think you ought to _leave_, freelancer," he growled.

"I think you're right," Knock Out agreed. He forced a smile and ducked out around the big Decepticon, backing quickly towards the door. Sounding awkward and unnaturally forced, the words tumbled out of him. "I'm sure you gentlemechs have, ah, a lot to talk about, so I'll just take my leave, shall I?"

The cold weight of their answering silence alone was more than enough to chase him from the room, and it was only the last remaining tatters of his pride that kept him from running as he made his escape. 

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Many thanks are due to Elemental, my much-cherished beta readers and eternal cheerleaders, and many more to SixthClone, who basically is my Breakdown. I couldn't write him without her.

Thank you also to everyone who's reading this, and especially everyone who commented! Feedback is what keeps me writing when the story isn't cooperating, and is much appreciated.

* * *

><p>Blackout had said <em>leave<em>, and by the time Knock Out got back to the hangar he'd decided to do just that. His ship was still badly under-stocked, but he didn't relish his chances of bargaining anything good out of Blackout or Breakdown now.

At least he'd taken the liberty of refueling while he had been the only conscious being in the base. It was going to be a tight trip to the next Decepticon-inhabited system, but he'd be able to make it.

It was a relief to find that the Teletraan AI in charge of the base's systems still seemed to think he had some kind of legitimate authority. He used it to lock down the hangar, against the very likely chance that one or the other surviving member of this unit would come looking for him. His little encounter with Blackout had been alarming, to say the least, and he didn't want to see what Breakdown would be like after the affective block had worn off.

It wasn't until the Teletraan terminal had confirmed the lock that Knock Out was able to relax, and even then it wasn't by much. He still had a lot of work to do before he could take off, and he wasn't going to count on his locks to hold out the others indefinitely. He didn't know how much time he was going to have until Blackout and Breakdown came knocking, but he was sure it wouldn't be as much as he needed.

Getting his untidy bounty of scrap organized and packed away was the most pressing task. The mess in his cargo bay had been acceptable for the short jump from battlefield to base, but there was no way he was going to attempt interstellar transit with a disarrayed hold. That was just asking for trouble.

He trotted up into his ship and started.

The hold was a disaster. Though he'd started processing his stockpile of scrap after he'd finished examining Breakdown, he hadn't been able to get very far with it. Instead he'd spent his time fueling his ship and operating on Blackout—the latter of which he was now regretting, if only because the massive Decepticon would be far less threatening if he were still crippled by his wounds. Knock Out had hoped to use the 'free' repair job as leverage to get some good materiel out of the other mech; so much for that. He would have regretted coming to this planet at all, except the load of spare-parts-to-be that he was currently packing away was well worth the stress of dealing with both of these glitches.

So he kept telling himself, anyway. The heavy metal of each successive piece in his hands was a reassuring weight, but it seemed a thin comfort when he remembered Blackout looming and the way the threat of the massive Decepticon had sent his systems into a panic he'd barely been able to control.

Finally, he lifted the last of the crates up to one of the cargo braces and locked it into place, thumping the crest of his helm against the side of the box an instant later. "Get a hold of yourself, Knock Out," he snapped, angry and willing to give voice to it only because he was alone. He closed his eyes against the tangle of readouts on his internal HUD, evidence of the panic he was _still_ having trouble controlling. _Scrap_, he hadn't been this spooked since his first days as a no-rank recruit in the army.

A clatter outside in the hangar made him jump, and he grumbled at himself an instant later. The hangar had obviously been partially repurposed for storage a long time ago, with cargo crates and equipment stacked haphazardly in the corners and all around the edges of the room. Of course some of the gear might shift and settle, especially since his landing here had surely disturbed things. And yet here he was, jumping at some little, harmless noise like it was the approaching tread of an assailant.

This was embarrassing.

Pivoting on one heel, he stalked down the ramp and out of the ship, letting his over-sensitive systems sweep the hangar. The door was closed, the keypad beside it blinking a reassurance that it was still locked. He was alone. He still had time to get his ship secured and get out of here.

"Calm down," he instructed himself firmly, finishing his scan and turning back towards his ship. "There's nothing—"

Another rattle made him jump and whirl again, the battle routines in his processor taking sudden control of his body. His blaster was leveled in front of him and he didn't even remember sending his hand the command to transform, but it meant he had a ranged weapon to train on the source of the sounds and he was okay with that. He certainly didn't regret the reflex when something that was all angles and dun-colored metal leaped into view from behind an untidy stack of crates, screeching wordlessly.

He loosed two wild shots at the thing and then his brain caught up with his processor and he realized what he was firing at. He was suddenly glad for his atrocious aim; the faceless shape was a Deployer, a squat little ground-surveillance unit, and it had to be Blackout's. Members of a combiner team couldn't simultaneously jockey a drone, at least not as far as Knock Out knew, and anyway, he'd marked the empty docks on Blackout while he'd been working on him.

The little drone had scrambled back under cover as soon as the first shot had seared past it, and Knock Out could hear it scolding furiously from its hiding place. It sounded distressed—his targeting systems had reported both shots as missed, but his targeting systems weren't flawless. Could he have hit it?

"Scrap," he muttered hotly, kneeling and trying to peer into the drone's refuge. Their one-to-one controller-to-drone ratio meant that Deployer jockeys tended to be protective of their charges, certainly moreso than the mechs who monitored the legions of the larger Vehicon drones that served in support of the sparked officers of the Decepticon army. Knock Out had no doubt that if this one was in here, its master wouldn't be far behind, and that he'd definitely be seeing Blackout that much sooner if he'd actually damaged the little thing with either of his salvos.

"Come on out, will you?" he crooned, slipping into a lilting, sing-songy vocalization pattern. Knock Out hadn't had many chances to work on Deployers—their hosts preferred to maintain them whenever possible—but this had worked to calm them the few times he'd had the opportunity; he hoped it would work again now. "Little thing, little thing, I know I scared you. I won't hurt you. Come let papa Knock Out take a look, hm?"

The frantic chattering calmed gradually, and Knock Out kept up the patter. When he saw its round, eyeless face start to edge into the light, he carefully extended a hand, his fingers crooked invitingly. "Almost there," he said. "Come on, come on—"

The Deployer crept cautiously forward, out of the shelter of its hiding place in the crack between two of the crates. Knock Out waited until it was poking tentatively at his fingers, then twisted his hand lightning-fast and grabbed it behind its blunt little head.

"Hah! Gotcha!"

Squalling, the much smaller mechanoid thrashed desperately, flailing around its heavy, clawed forearms and long tail as it tried to escape. Knock Out growled as it gouged slivers out of the paint job on his arm and hand, but maintained his grip, examining the drone from as many angles as possible.

He lifted the drone over his head to look at its underside, provoking a particularly vehement squall, and of course it was then that Blackout walked in.

Startled, Knock Out dropped the drone, which scored a long swipe down his chest with its tail as it fell. It hit the ground and fled towards its host, but Knock Out ignored it; his attention was fixed on Blackout.

"How did you get in here?" he asked, too surprised to make the demand properly imperious. His hand, which had reverted while he was trying to wrangle the drone, transformed into the blaster again, and he leveled it at the larger mech.

"Emergency override," Blackout said. He stepped out of the doorway and took a look around the hangar, apparently unconcerned by the threat of Knock Out's weapon. Breakdown came through behind him, towing a cargo sledge; their combined presence sent Knock Out stumbling back, defensive subroutines booting in an automatic riot in his processor.

"I was just leaving," he said, knowing he sounded desperate and not even caring at this point. "There's no need for this—"

"There's been a change of plans," Blackout said, interrupting him. "We're going with you." He was serious enough that there was no way it was a joke; he seemed to mean it.

Knock Out laughed incredulously. "Come again?"

"I'm not repeating myself." Blackout turned to Breakdown, shoving a datapad into the other mech's hands. "You have a decicycle," he told the other mech. "Start loading."

Real alarm sizzled through Knock Out's systems. He watched Breakdown wade into the untidy stacks of crates, marking the slow and clumsy movement of the surviving Stunticon as unthreatening. Blackout was obviously the real danger, and his attention snapped back to the massive Decepticon.

There was a part of Knock Out that wanted nothing more than to flee into the ship, where he could lock out these nightmares and pretend he was safe. That was an admission of vulnerability he refused to make, though; he still had some slagging dignity. He forced himself to stomp towards Blackout, letting his panic fuel a bravado he absolutely did not feel. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, stabbing a sharp fingertip at the other mech's broad chest.

As Knock Out had done to him before, so Blackout swatted him away now. The difference was that when Blackout hit Knock Out, the impact was enough to send him reeling into the curved hull of the docked ship, his processor fritzing. By the time Knock Out's perceptive systems stabilized, Blackout had stalked past him, deeper into the hangar.

Pushing away from the hull of the ship, he hurried to put himself in front of Blackout again. "If you're going to use my ship, I think I have a right to know what's going on," he said, trying to make himself appear as tall and imposing as possible. Even at full extension, though, he barely came up to the other mech's chest, and when Blackout took a long stride directly at him, he jumped quickly back.

To Knock Out's surprise, though, Blackout paused and answered him instead of walking right by, his voice a terse rumble. "The Autobots found us. We're pulling out, and your ship will be taking us."

"Of course," he said quickly, spreading his hands ingratiatingly. "Always happy to do what I can to further the Decepticon cause. But—" He paused, realizing suddenly the bargaining power this gave him. "—But it's not going to be a comfortable trip. My ship is low on certain, ah, necessities, and if there are going to be three of us…" He trailed off suggestively, trusting Blackout to be able to fill in the blanks. Most of the Decepticons stationed in the fringe systems like this had served or travelled on improperly provisioned ships. He _had_ to know how much more stress it could add to an already perilous journey.

"What do you need?" Blackout asked slowly. His face was guarded and there was obvious reluctance in his voice. Knock Out tried not to beam too victoriously at him.

"Let me get the list," he said, and turned away to the ship before the other mech had a chance to respond.

He took a moment to scan the hold with critical optics as soon as he was inside, ensuring that he hadn't overlooked anything when he'd been packing his cargo of new parts. It was no secret that those few medics remaining with the army stripped dead soldiers for spares, but that didn't mean survivors wanted to see their terminated teammates in dismembered hunks while the loss was still fresh. Knock Out wanted even less to risk Breakdown stumbling across what was left of his gestaltmates, especially if they were going to be sharing the close quarters of Knock Out's ship for any extended period of time.

He'd packed well, though. There were no loose or overlooked parts lurking; everything had been sealed away in opaque crates. It should be safe enough to let Breakdown in here.

Grabbing the datapad containing the ship's manifest from its niche, Knock Out returned to the hangar. His stride was relaxed and his smile easy as he returned to Blackout's side, but there were attentive subroutines monitoring both of the other Decepticons scrolling in his HUD and he wasn't shutting that particular program down any time soon. Just because he had some leverage here didn't mean he could let his guard down. Blackout was still a very dangerous mech, and the dented plating of his shoulder from where he'd been slapped aside like a Vehicon stood as testament to that.

Silently, Blackout held out a hand for the datapad. Knock Out handed it over, trying to keep his attention evenly divided between both Blackout and Breakdown—who was still moving slowly among the heaped storage crates, comparing labels to the list in his hand and occasionally adding one to the sledge he still tugged behind him—while the former perused his own list.

Blackout was silent for a long time, his mouth pursed thoughtfully. Occasionally his blunt fingertips would dance over the screen. Finally, the hand holding the datapad dropped, and Blackout's eyes sought Breakdown. "Come here," he said, reinforcing the command with a crook of a finger.

The Stunticon paused with another crate in his hands, blinking dully at Blackout. He carefully placed his burden on the cargo sledge, picked his datapad back up, and made his way back out of the stacks. "Yeah?" he asked, his voice flat and uninterested.

Blackout took Breakdown's pad from him and connected the two devices, making changes on both with swift strokes of his big fingers. Quickly done, he handed Breakdown's back. "Make sure you get _everything_ on this," he said. "I changed it."

Breakdown glanced down at the updated list, then nodded silently and turned back to his work.

Knock Out reached to take his own datapad back just as Blackout offered it and scrutinized the modified manifest closely. Far fewer items than he'd expected had been selected. "What about the rest of this?" he asked, waving the pad.

"Unnecessary frivolities," Blackout said.

_Unnecessary frivolities_ that would make a long-term trip in close quarters far more bearable, and long-term was what a trip to any another Decepticon emplacement would be in Knock Out's ship. It wasn't exactly optimized for speed. In fact, Knock Out had chosen this particular vessel specifically for how unremarkable it was. It couldn't flit rapidly between star systems, it couldn't carry more than four or five mechs without things getting uncomfortable, and the amount of space it had for cargo was meager when it was carrying its proper crew complement. It had pathetic specs compared to most of the other ships in the fleet, and he liked it that way. Who would bother to try and take it from him?

There were plenty of things on his list that weren't necessary for survival, but sure were for comfort. Decepticons had enough trouble sharing quarters on the massive battleships and troop transports that roamed the stars, ships that had recreation decks and training space and _room_. The prospect of being crammed in his ship with these two with nothing to distract or entertain them was unpleasant.

No, more than that, it was trouble. Decepticons had a knack for _entertaining_ themselves, after all.

He waved the pad at Blackout again, scowling. "I promise you, this trip isn't going to be easy for _any_ of us if we don't get some of this stuff on-ship before we leave. You don't even have to pack it yourself, just tell me where to—"

"No." Blackout smacked him again—or would have, if Knock Out hadn't seen the blow coming and ducked out of the way. "No time."

"No time?" Knock Out snorted. "Even if I started up its pre-flight procedures this nanoclick, I'd _still_ have enough time to toss your base for some of these supplies before the ship was cleared for take-off. There may not be a lot of time, but there's _enough_."

"I said no." Blackout's eyes were blazing dangerously bright in his face. "Soldier, I expect you to fall in line and start prepping our ship for departure. Do I make myself clear?"

Knock Out laughed sharply. "Oh, that's cute. You think you can command me."

"I'm commanding officer of this unit," Blackout said. His deep voice was starting to sound strained. "And that gives me rank over _you_, medic."

"Ah ah." Knock Out would have waved his finger in Blackout's face if it hadn't involved getting in arm's reach of the mech. "I'm not actually part of this unit, remember? If we're going to be leaving together, it's going to have to be on my terms."

The huge Decepticon growled, but didn't look particularly surprised by Knock Out's ultimatum. "So you don't intend to cooperate?"

"Cooperate?" Knock Out grinned predatorily. "My friend, you're the one who needs to cooperate with me. My ship, my rules."

Blackout's vents cycled in a sigh. "So be it," he muttered. He held out a hand to Knock Out. "Let me see that list again?"

Elated by Blackout's unexpected capitulation, Knock Out had to resist the urge to laugh again. He suspected that if he did, the sound would be just a bit hysterical with relief. "Of course." He toned his triumphant grin down into tamer smile and closed the gap that had opened between them, holding the datapad out to the bigger mech. Blackout reached for it—and locked his big fingers around Knock Out's wrist instead. A brutal yank unbalanced him, making him stumble right into Blackout's other outstretched hand.

The big fingers closed tight around his throat. Knock Out had one brief moment to be surprised and angry, and then Blackout lifted him straight off his feet and there was only panic. He struggled, thrashing and kicking, scratching frantically at the hand choking him in an attempt to get the grip to loosen.

In response, there was only a confused impression of movement and then Blackout slammed him painfully against the hull of the ship. Knock Out tried to get enough purchase with his hands and his feet to push off, but the curved metal exterior of the vehicle sloped sharply back and away and Blackout had better leverage anyway. Between his longer arms and his significant weight advantage, Blackout had him very well pinned.

Panic set Knock Out's systems to rioting, crowding the digital overlay on his vision with readouts warning him direly that he was in trouble. If anything, his HUD was only adding insult to injury, as if the pain in his throat and the absence of solid ground under his desperately kicking feet didn't make his predicament clear enough. A blinking icon warned him that the fluid lines and hydraulic struts in his neck were being crushed—a column of constantly updating numbers showed calculations indicating the very low probability that he would be able to bring any of his weapons to bear effectively— a timer in one corner of his optical display counted down how many nanoclicks he had left before the energon deprivation to his brain forced him into stasis lock— And there was more, a coruscating shimmer of data that threatened to overwhelm his optical field.

Usually he was grateful for the constant stream of info from the battle sub-computer in his processor, but right now, it all only served to highlight how very scrapped he was.

He went limp, hands clutched on Blackout's wrist but no longer scrabbling and scratching. "Stop," he said, or tried—the single word was badly garbled by static. "Nng, please— Do whatever you want—"

It had been a long time since he'd had to beg for his life, and he counted it as a personal failure that he was reduced to it now, but it would get him through this. He could figure out what went wrong here and adjust his _modus operandi_ appropriately later. The important thing right now was to _survive_, by any means necessary.

Only something was wrong. Blackout's fingers hadn't loosened their grip; he hadn't eased his weight off the delicate mechanisms of Knock Out's throat; the promise of 'whatever you want' hadn't made his optics light up greedily. If anything, the servos hitched tighter, and through the swarm of readouts on his HUD, he thought he saw the bigger mech sneer.

Choking, he started to struggle again, but it was already too late. His optical readout was warning him of systems failures in his brain and his processor both. What little physical resistance he could still command was weak and uncoordinated, and he could barely see now for the digital display over his vision, telling him just how badly he'd misjudged this mech here, just how badly he'd failed…

And this was going to be the failure he wouldn't bounce back from, wasn't it?

It was the last coherent thought he managed before his vision went black and stasis lock claimed him.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> And that's all for now~. "Mercenary Medicine" is going to be going on a little hiatus while I work on building back up my buffer of finished chapters. Again, thank you so much to everyone who's been reading so far, especially everyone who leaves a comment or adds this to their faves or alerts. I'll work hard on getting the next chapters out as soon as I can!

Thanks for your patience, and thank you for reading. Happy holidays, everyone!


	6. Chapter 6

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Elemental for beta-reading this for me, and special thanks to SixthClone/Dirge, without whom this story would have died miserably around chapter 4. You _are_ my Breakdown, Dirge; I wouldn't be able to do this without you!

Thanks for your patience, everyone, while I was on my little break here. This new chapter's the longest yet; I hope it's worth the wait! 

* * *

><p>The slippery little medic's ship was not an impressive vehicle, but it was at least responsive. When Blackout's big fingers played over the manual controls of the pilot's cradle, it reconfigured obediently to his proportions. When he settled into both the seat and the systems and asserted his control over the ship's AI, he was met with minimal resistance. Bending the ship to his will took only a few moments; then he was free to start up its pre-flight protocols. He hesitated a moment over the routines, considering both the full and abbreviated sets, before finally settling on full. The Autobots were coming and he wanted to be well clear of here before they arrived, but he refused to take a ship in unknown repair into space. Better to risk the full pre-flight check than shake apart in the atmosphere.<p>

The Autobots were coming, yes, but slowly. They were constrained to ground travel, and he'd collected enough data from his outer perimeter sensors to know that their whole unit was on the move concurrently. Clearly, they were planning a show of force to wipe out the last survivor of this emplacement.

Blackout didn't intend to be around to see it. He also didn't intend to leave anything of value behind in his base to be looted.

Leaving the ship to its routines, he exited to the hangar. He checked briefly on Breakdown, finding the last Stunticon still on-task, methodically collecting the things Blackout had told him to collect. He wasn't going about it as quickly as Blackout would have liked, but he knew better than to exhort the other mech to a faster effort; this was the best he was going to be getting out of Breakdown. The fact that he was getting anything at all out of him right now was, frankly, a miracle.

So Blackout left him to it, and struck out into the base proper. He had his own little list of chores to do before they left, and a limited window of time in which to do it. He may not have needed to rush, but that didn't mean he could linger.

First things first: the dangling spines depending from Blackout's shoulders spread, exposing the sheltered mount that his Deployer was docked in. Scorponok sprang free, falling lightly to the ground with an electronic chirp. Its directives already uploaded into its processor, it spun and scurried off, disappearing quickly around a corner on its way to its first target. The drone's behavioral programming was limited, but destruction was well within its parameters, and there were a few delicate and difficult to transport things that Blackout wanted to have thoroughly decimated before he pulled what was left of his command out of here.

With his drone employed in the indelicate tasks on his itinerary, Blackout was free to pursue the delicate ones. First and most important was taking care of the Teletraan unit attached to this base, and that involved making his way _down_. Though the computer could be accessed at any number of terminals in the upper level of the base, the Teletraan's main processing core was stored below, coupled to the power plant that kept all the equipment running. Blackout descended into the crudely hewn lower level as quickly as his bulky frame allowed—there wasn't a lot of room for maneuvering down here, not for a mech his size. If Dead End or Dragstrip were here—

He shut off that train of thought mercilessly. They weren't. Only Breakdown was left to him, and Breakdown was all but useless now. Perhaps if he hadn't dealt with the little medic… But that thought was as pointless as wishing after any of the dead Stunticons. Knock Out was of even less use to him currently than Breakdown, and Blackout wouldn't have trusted him even if he was still functional.

No, this was on him. Heedless of the way his broad shoulders scraped, he forced himself into the room housing the Teletraan's core processor. He input his emergency override codes, corroborated them with his personnel ident, and instructed the computer to hard-write its logs to its primary memory core for him. The process took long enough to make him impatient, but his hands were careful as he popped the overwritten core from its housing, tucking the ultra-dense data matrix securely into a storage compartment under his plating. From there, he had the computer wipe its whole system clean. He monitored the purge closely, waiting for the confirmation that all of the data in the Teletraan's banks had been deleted before he evolved his sonic concussor and slagged the hardware.

He wasn't going to leave any data here for the Autobots to mine. He'd bungled this command badly already; he couldn't risk letting anything else go wrong. Following the proper protocol for clearing the Teletraan had used up a good chunk of his budget of time, but it was the task most important to do properly.

He squeezed himself back out of the room and moved to the larger chamber next door. The base's power plant required more space than the Teletraan's mainframe, so he was able to maneuver more freely as he set about collecting valuable fuel cells. Energon was hard enough to come by that it would be stupid to leave a scrap of it here. Even the half-consumed crystal currently powering the plant was disconnected roughly from the machinery and added to the pile, plunging the room around him into darkness as the plant crashed.

Unperturbed, Blackout brought up the running lights on his chassis and gathered the rods of refined energon. By the time he made it through the door, the power plant's backup batteries had kicked in. The emergency lights were dim and widely-spaced, but provided more than enough illumination once he switched his optical system over to low-light optimization.

Cradling the rods of refined energon, he returned with them to the hangar. This task too delicate to leave to Breakdown, he packed away both the fuel rods and the memory core himself, stowing the container securely in the ship's cargo hold. He took the opportunity to check the progress of the ship's pre-flight routines, adjusted his mental time budget accordingly, and struck out again, this time towing a sledge and a stack of empty crates behind him.

His first stop this time was the medbay and the storage room next door. Everything in crates or containers had already been sent with Breakdown to the hangar for loading onto the ship, but valuable supplies remained in the messy rooms. Blackout packed them away haphazardly, dumping loose tools and equipment into empty crates as quickly as he could. He tried not to break anything, but time was of the essence here, and so everything that remained now was packed roughly away. The room summarily tidied, he moved on.

Next on his itinerary was the residential quarters—or, to be more specific, Wildrider's workshop. The hyperaggressive Stunticon had been a compulsive tinkerer, obsessed with finding new and improved ways to blow his enemies to slag. He'd been damn good at it, too, and Blackout knew that leaving behind any of his stash of upgraded and experimental weaponry for the Autobots to find would be so negligent they'd probably call it treason. He'd already had Breakdown sweep the armory proper, where the more conventional armaments used by the whole team had been stored, but he knew he couldn't ask him to clear Wildrider's workshop.

The small room was cluttered enough that it should have felt unbearably cramped, were it not for Blackout's familiarity with it. He had been in here often enough—consulting with Wildrider, offering advice or criticism, taking him to task when his experiments put the other Stunticons or the structural integrity of their base at risk—that he knew exactly how to twist and hunch his massive body to fit comfortably.

There was a half-assembled prototype spread across the main worktable, tools and loose components scattered haphazardly around it. Everything else was stuffed into place in a drawer or piled on a shelf; the rack of tools against the wall was so overburdened that Blackout knew well not to brush against it, lest he trigger a collapse. In all his long stellar cycles, Blackout had never met a mech so incapable of tidiness or organization within a workspace as Wildrider—nor a mech so prone to violent retribution when the disorder of his workspace was rearranged without his permission. He was so used to the mech's tantrums that he almost expected to hear a yowl of protest now, as he started sweeping things into an empty container, but of course none came. Wildrider was far beyond objecting to the rough treatment of his things.

Still, it was with regret that Blackout hastily cleared out the workshop. Wildrider's nasty and ingenious little innovations deserved more respect than he was able to give them right now.

After the sheer bulk of things in Wildrider's quarters, Dead End's room next door was almost overwhelming in how empty it was. Dead End had opined frequently that collecting material possessions was pointless, a futile exercise when they were all destined to die and leave anything they claimed behind anyway, and the sterility of his room was a testament to the sincerity of his beliefs. The only thing that gave the room any personality was the extra power jack on the floor that Wildrider had installed, so he could recharge beside his brother when the hookups in his own room were buried under his stuff.

Nothing in the room meant nothing he had to spend time taking, though, so he moved on. Drag Strip's quarters were next, and almost as overfull as Wildrider's. Unlike Wildrider's workshop, though, everything in Drag Strip's room was meticulously organized—and intensely personal. His room was cluttered with trophies. Ranks of racing awards, won before the start of the war, were carefully arranged on a tiered shelf with the most prestigious at the top. A row of prizes from beauty competitions was hung just so in a clear-fronted case on the wall. There was even a cabinet full of more grisly mementos, trophies of his victories since the war had begun—of rivals vanquished, of battles won, of actions successfully completed. Blackout had always found the proud and macabre display obscene.

There was only one other thing in the room, another tall cabinet with a mirrored front, stocked full of the vain little athlete's cosmetic supplies. This was the only cabinet Blackout bothered to empty. He had no use for Drag Strip's extensive collection of souvenirs, but the Stunticon had guarded his hoard of polish and wax so jealously that it had to be worth something. Blackout took it all.

Motormaster's room, when he came to it next, was locked. It wasn't a surprise, but it was an annoyance, and Blackout didn't have time to override the encryptions. He blew open the door.

The room on the other side was bigger than Blackout had expected, bigger even than his own quarters elsewhere in their base. It didn't surprise him that the leader of the Stunticons would claim the largest of the personal quarters for himself, but the fact that he'd somehow contrived to expand his allotment even beyond that, _without Blackout knowing_, was impressive.

Just as impressive was the number of screens hanging on the walls. Blackout had rarely seen so many of the translucent digital displays in one room place, and never for purely personal use. Even more astonishing was the realization that Motormaster must have transported these here as part of his personal cargo; all of the screens that had been a part of their construction allotment were accounted for elsewhere in the base, meaning he'd brought these along specifically for his own use. They must have comprised the bulk of his allotment—though not particularly fragile, display screens had to be carefully packed against damage. This many would have taken up a lot of space.

If the wealth of display screens wasn't astonishing enough, the walls of Motormaster's room were covered still further. The space between the screens was plastered with flimsies. Cognizant as he was of his meager budget of time, Blackout checked both his chronometer and his projections estimating the Autobots' arrival to the base, and determined that he could spare at least a few moments to indulge his interest. He boosted the power to his running lights to better illuminate the images on the wall, taking a closer look.

The flimsies were hardcopies of schematic images, printed out on thin synthetic film and tacked directly to the surface of the wall. Blackout recognized diagrams of interstellar ships and ground transports, of power plants and broadcasting rigs and automated defense systems, of Vehicon labor drones and even the thirteen basic Cybertronian model types, plus the most common Autobot and Decepticon variations.

Every single image was marked. With a heavy hand on the stylus, Motormaster had circled weak points and flaws, and crowded the margins with notes on the most effective strategies for sabotage, assault, and destruction. Curious, Blackout booted up some of the screens, and found more of the same. There were tactical diagrams and strategic maps, rotating models with bright lines indicating the best places to attack. The biggest by far turned out to be an image of their gestalt form, Menasor, with all the weaknesses ruthlessly highlighted.

Blackout couldn't help but wonder if it was one of these very weaknesses that the Autobots had exploited to topple the team.

That particular screen was the first to be detached and packed away, and Blackout took special care with the memory module storing the Menasor schematic. All the rest of the screens on the wall followed, and after them the stack of datapads containing military manuals and strategy handbooks that he found stored in a niche near the berth. He contemplated taking the flimsies, too, but knew the work too delicate for the time he had remaining. Instead he pulled them down, leaving the images in tattered scraps on the floor. The last of them, still settling, stirred in the wake of his departure as he exited through the slagged doorway.

That left Breakdown's quarters. Breakdown had never had as much stuff to store or display as Wildrider and Drag Strip, which made his room seem bigger than it was. What possessions there were tended to be practical: there was a battered old simulation terminal in one corner; in the other, a rack of maintenance supplies. The terminal wasn't worth taking, but Blackout picked up the cartridges, shuffling through them quickly. Combat training sims, old and well used—when he couldn't get the others to spar with him, Blackout knew, he'd hone his skills mentally instead v. Blackout hesitated over the cartridges for a moment before slotting them away in one of his containers; they didn't take up much space, after all, and he thought awkwardly that Breakdown might like them as mementoes. He didn't seem to have anything more personal to take instead.

There was ample evidence of the others, though. Half-empty bottles of polish and soiled cloths left behind by Drag Strip were heaped messily next to Breakdown's makeshift maintenance array, and a smaller stack of sim cartridges in a niche—racing titles all of them—must have been his as well. Drag Strip had been an avid enthusiast, often bemoaning the loss of the sport and the fact that the only other Stunticon who'd race him was Wildrider.

Drag Strip had been the most frequent visitor to Breakdown's room, but the others were not unaccounted for. A medical scanner of Dead End's was sitting with Breakdown's maintenance equipment on the rack, and a deactivated grenade that must have been one of Wildrider's prototypes had rolled into a corner and been forgotten. Some of the tools on and around the maintenance array belonged to one or the other of his brothers.

Even Motormaster had left a mark, in a military history datapad that had been shoved nearly out of sight behind one of the fixtures in the room.

In fact, the only person on the base who hadn't spent enough time in Breakdown's room to leave something behind was Blackout himself. Unsurprising—the Stunticons occasionally seemed to have trouble getting along with each other; there hadn't been room in their unsteady society for anyone else, not even their handler.

Thinking about it was enough to make him frown, but not enough to put him off his task. Blackout methodically stripped the corner maintenance rack, then carefully collected anything else left behind in the room that looked like it still had worth.

It didn't take long, but there was still an alert beacon flashing in his vision as he stepped out of the room, warning him that his time here was starting to run short. He paused a moment to check on Scorponok's progress, then turned his back on the Stunticons' quarters and moved on. Another mech might have lingered, might have bid farewell to dead comrades in this place most touched by their presence, but not Blackout. He just secured the crates on his sledge and moved on.

He had more important things to do right now than mourn a team that had never chosen to include him.

Room by room, he swept the rest of the base, taking anything of value that he could and destroying what he couldn't. By the time he made it back to the hangar, Scorponok had finished and rejoined him, docking to his bay and going quiescent under the spines hanging from Blackout's back.

Breakdown had finished too. Blackout found him in the ship's cargo bay, sitting on one of the crates, passing the datapad back and forth between his hands with a mindless, mechanical motion. He looked up when Blackout boarded the ship, his expression blank; when commanded, he helped distribute the rest of the cargo. Breakdown had never been a particularly talkative mech, but his utter silence now was disquieting, and Blackout hurried him along. The sooner they were done here, the better.

Together, they fetched the crumpled body of the medic and carried that, too, into the ship. There was a vindictive little part of Blackout that wanted to leave it behind for the Autobots to find, but he ignored it and strapped the inert form into place on the transport sledge docked against the wall. No resource, no matter how poorly Blackout regarded it personally, could be left behind for their enemy to take hold of. That was the entire point of this little race against time, after all.

Leaving Breakdown with an order to seal the cargo bay doors and then secure himself for takeoff, Blackout returned to the cockpit. He settled into the reconfigured pilot's cradle, connecting the physical jacks and letting his mind sink into the ship's systems. There was no resistance now, and the AI's subprocessors responded to his succession of queries with affirmatives. The ship was more than airworthy, according to the diagnostics; it was in excellent repair.

Perversely, Blackout found himself annoyed. It would have been far more congruent with his personal opinion of the medic that the ship had been barely functional.

His irrational annoyance aside, though, it was a relief to feel the strong surge of the engines as he engaged them, loosing just enough thrust to lift the ship off the floor for the hangar. His hands twitched in the control cradles, sending the ship up—

The shriek of an alarm inside his head startled him enough that the ship bucked under his hands, the engines cutting out and dropping the whole craft hard to the floor of the hangar. The pilot's seat was cushioned against turbulence but he felt the impact nonetheless, rattling through a body far bigger than even the sizeable one he inhabited. The crush of sensation was enough to fritz his processor, which set off a fresh wave of alarms in the systems that it was currently connected to. The cacophony seemed so much louder than his own HUD when it wasn't augmented by the ship's systems that Blackout yanked his hands out of the interfaces without thinking, scrabbling for the cranial cable and pulling that free too.

The abrupt disconnection was enough to make him reel, his engine roaring in his chassis. He levered himself upright and cycled his vents hard, trying to cool his overheated body. It had been so long since he'd piloted any type of vehicle that he'd forgotten how..._immersive_ the experience could be.

He really could have done without a reminder this unpleasant. If there was someone else to pilot the ship…

But there wasn't, of course, and Blackout wasn't going to waste any time lamenting that fact. He settled his bulky body back into the chair, determination on his face as he reached for the control handles again. Neglecting for the moment to reattach the cortical jack, he activated the big display mounted on the bulkhead in front of him, spilling the data from the ship's AI across the screen instead of his internal HUD. He minimized the damage reports from the ship's proximal sensors, privileging the readouts from its distal systems instead, looking for the cause of the initial alarm.

It had been the proximity sensors. He'd attempted to lift the ship through a hatchway that hadn't irised open to admit him.

Figuring out what had happened from there wasn't difficult: the base's auxiliary power network wasn't equipped to handle the massive portal in the hangar roof. The automatic system that should have detected the incipient takeoff and accommodated it was dead. He'd have to open the door manually.

With enough time, he could have used the analog release to crank the door open, but that wasn't an option with the enemy bearing down on them. No, if he wanted this ship out of here before the Autobots arrived, there was really only one solution. With only a brief rumble to a blank and incurious Breakdown to _stay put_, Blackout palmed open the passenger exit.

Unlike the cargo hatch, which allowed access from the floor when the ship was docked, the passenger airlock opened on open air. In a properly equipped facility there would have been a gangway or a catwalk at this level, but in this rough base with its tiny hangar, there was nothing. No wonder the ground-bound medic hadn't been using this egress from the ship.

But the open air was no obstacle for a proper Decepticon like Blackout. He stepped out and transformed, arresting his fall as he took on the streamlined shape of his hover-carrier altmode and rising easily towards the roof of the hangar. He swung out from under the recessed doorway, positioning himself carefully out of the way, and then opened fire with his onboard artillery.

The hatch was reinforced against attack from above but not from below, and it didn't take many salvos before it began to warp and crack. He switched from energy weapons to his sonic concussor, and within three shots the doorway—and the rock and mechanisms surrounding it—had collapsed inward.

He could do nothing but watch as the falling debris thundered against the ship below. It was a shame, having to intentionally damage a vehicle that had been in such good repair, but there was no viable alternative. The dents and scratches in the hull could always be repaired later.

Returning to the ship involved a tricky maneuver requiring him to carefully time his transformation back to root mode, catching the edge of the doorway and utilizing his momentum to swing himself into the airlock. It wasn't his most graceful landing, but his only audience was Breakdown. He didn't exactly expect the other mech to mock him for it.

Returning to the cockpit, he took his place in the pilot's cradle once more. He took up the cranial cable and reconnected the cortical jack with more force than was strictly necessary for handling the delicate equipment, and sunk back into the ship's systems with determination. The full, ethereal sensation of the ship settled around him, proximal sensor nets alight with pricks of pain half-felt where his clumsy actions had damaged the hull. He paid just enough attention to the damage reports to ascertain that nothing immediately vital to the ship's handling had been affected, then minimized them, thrusting the sensations and the accompanying data away and focusing on takeoff.

The ship, much to his relief, was just as responsive as before, lifting away from the floor with only a minor tremor. He guided it up, edging it carefully through the ragged hole he had left in the hangar's ceiling. Part of him expected attack as soon as he was in the open air, but it didn't come. In fact, the ship's powerful scanners weren't reporting anyone in the immediate vicinity, although there Cybertronian signals over the ridge—the Autobot party, undoubtedly staging their operation under the cover of rock.

Blackout permitted himself a grim smile of satisfaction as he engaged the ship's transformation protocols, its stubby wings reconfiguring to the proper alignment for slipping through the envelope of the planet's atmosphere. Let the Autobots attack. They would find no one else to kill and nothing of use, and maybe squander some of their own resources in the action.

He pointed the obedient vessel to the stars and engaged the throttle.

Time to abandon this worthless planet, this botched command, this echoingly empty base, and see what he could salvage from this disaster. 

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading!<p> 


	7. Chapter 7

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Elemental for beta-reading this for me, and special thanks to SixthClone/Dirge, without whom this story would have died miserably around chapter 4. You _are_ my Breakdown, Dirge; I wouldn't be able to do this without you!

* * *

><p>Knock Out woke up with a jerk, his cortical subprocessor coming online all at once and pulling him violently out of his heavy stasis. Immediately he started to thrash, only an instant after that realized he was bound. His first impulse was to <em>fight<em>, to struggle until he was free again, but he wasn't so panicked that he couldn't acknowledge the rashness of the instinct.

His processor, far ahead of his brain as it usually was, was already racing; it took a tremendous mental effort to calm himself enough to lie still. He was bound, yes, and that was bad, but he was also awake, and that latter was an excellent sign. Being awake meant he was still alive, a condition he honestly hadn't expected to continue after he'd been choked into unconsciousness.

All right, so he was still alive. That was a good start.

What next?

Laying back in his restraints, Knock Out took stock of his situation. He was on his ship, that much was obvious. He had recognized the contours of his cargo bay even through the frenzy of his awakening, even despite the unfamiliar press of containers stacked and secured in towers around him. That his ship was in motion was just as obvious—he was so familiar by now with the thrum of the engines operating that he had to deliberately filter the sound out of his perceptions to confirm it was there.

Where the ship was and where it was going, though, he had no idea. Oh, he could open his wireless link to the ship's computers—the icon sat, small and unobtrusive, in the corner of his vision—but if he did that, anyone else actively connected to the systems would know he was online again. And while that discovery was inevitable, he preferred not to reveal the fact before he was ready.

Shuttering his optics, he brought up his diagnostics instead. His processor fed the information neatly to his brain, angular neon glyphs tracing out a list of hurts on his internal optical display. The tally of injured components in his throat was enough to make him wince, but it seemed to be the worst of his damages, and for that he was grateful. Prolonged energon deprivation could do nasty things to a mech's brain, damage to sensory and perceptive systems chief among them. Knock Out was perfectly willing to operate on his injured throat, a notoriously difficult region to have to work on alone, if it meant he didn't have to worry about how to perform solo surgery on his cognitive subprocessor.

The rest of the diagnostics scrolled quickly by, at the bottom just a list of dents and cosmetic damages. In any other situation, he would have been furious to have had his plating so besmirched; right now, it was too much of a relief to find no evidence that he'd been abused further while he was unconscious. That bode well, almost as well as the fact that he'd woken up at all, but he wasn't foolish enough to relax.

They'd left him alive for a _reason_, after all, and he didn't know either of them nearly well enough to begin to guess at what that might be.

Letting his eyes open, Knock Out began to shift in his restraints, testing their hold on him. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared—the straps across his body held him against the makeshift berth of the transport sledge, but didn't constrain him any further than that. He'd used this same arrangement himself to secure Breakdown's inert form to this very sledge earlier, in fact, and it was an easy thing to release himself now. His nimble fingers found first one catch, then the next and the next, and the straps fell obligingly away as he sat up and looked around.

It had been a very long time since he'd seen his cargo bay this full. Containers towered up over his head, the stacks taller than he was even after he gingerly climbed off the sledge and stood. He reached out to the nearest, playing his fingers over the label. The robust little display activated, but there wasn't much information on it: just a name, Wildrider, and Blackout's ident marking him as the one who'd input the label.

Knock Out checked more crates, but none of the labels offered him any more information than the first. They had to contain effects from the base, that much seemed obvious, and Knock Out had to admit he was a bit curious. Were they full of the possessions of dead mechs, or the living ones who currently possessed his ship? Or were there supplies or equipment in here that he could be taking advantage of?

He wondered if they had been locked, and how complex the encryptions might be. He wondered if he could get them open. He wondered if what he found inside would be useful to him.

It wasn't until he reached for one of the containers with every intention of prying his way inside that he realized what he was doing. Yes, it was true that he needed to take stock of his situation if he was going to successfully make it through, but not quite like this.

This impulse was just a distraction.

Knock Out dropped his hands and turned away. There was really only one direction to go, and that was out—out of the little alcove formed by the containers stacked around the transport sledge and into the aisle that ran between the cargo hatch and the lift to the upper deck. It was the only open space left in the hold, and that was enough to make even Knock Out feel cramped, a discomfort that his diminutive stature usually spared him.

He couldn't help a shiver as he walked with measured steps towards the lift at the end of the hold. Paranoia kept his sensory nets cast wide—the absence of any other energy signature meant he was alone in the hold, but alone didn't mean safe, especially not with a Deployer on ship.

Still, the hold was quiet; he was the only thing moving, and the only sounds were the familiar operations of his own body and the equally familiar ambient noise of his ship in motion. It appeared he really was alone (although that didn't mean he was unobserved).

Well. If they were watching him, they'd know already that he was awake; if they weren't, they were about to find out. Knock Out stepped onto the lift platform and hit the ascend button without looking, his optics already on the hatch in the hold's ceiling. He braced himself for movement without even having to consciously think about it.

Nothing happened, except for the control panel for the lift beeping twice. Startled, Knock Out dropped his gaze to the simple panel. It was flashing at him, a single glyph in a bright field.

A single glyph, but it was enough to make him shiver again, his systems jolting in shock.

_Locked_. 

* * *

><p>The immersion of piloting a ship like this one, one with its full complement of AI systems and no other bridge crew to buffer the strain, proved too much for Blackout. He'd expected it would—he was used to jockeying a drone, not interfacing mind-to-mind with something almost as intelligent as he was, and drone jockeys were notoriously bad pilots for just that reason—but he was still disappointed in himself.<p>

He refused to disconnect until they were safely out of the planetary system, though. It wasn't until he triggered the ship's transformation to its optimum interstellar configuration that he was willing to admit defeat, unplugging the cortical jack and releasing the control handles. Disconnected from the vast mind of the ship, he slumped back in the pilot's cradle. What he really wanted was to seek a berth and go down for a recharge just as long as he'd spent getting this ship into empty space, but he knew that if he tried to stand right now, he'd stumble. Better to sit and wait for his systems to re-equilibrate to single function.

There was more space for him if he sat anyway. Though it was built to adequately accommodate a bridge crew of three, he was big enough to really stretch the ship's design specs. The pilot's cradle fit him—barely—but he knew that if he stood his helm would scrape the ceiling. He couldn't imagine what a hell it would be in here if he had the other two crew members this ship was built for. Blackout may not have been plagued by the stifling claustrophobia that tended to afflict high-performance fliers like Seekers, but that didn't mean he liked to be cramped or crowded.

Admittedly, the ship _would_ be easier to fly with crew-mates to take some of the load off his processor, but only if he had a crew he'd be willing to trust. The medic was out of the question, and while he would trust Breakdown with the task, Breakdown wasn't going to be useful again for a long time—if ever.

Blackout had seen first-hand the way a gestalt team could unravel with the loss of only one or two members. He'd been a handler for literally as long as the technology had been innovated—though not directly involved with the project, Blackout had been working at the scientific installation that had made the breakthrough on combiner technology. His massive size had gotten him recruited into the testing phases, not as a subject but as an assistant; there hadn't been many other mechs in the complex capable of standing their ground against the tottering, uncoordinated beasts that were the first gestalts. Among scientists, even among Decepticon scientists, Blackout's massive size and all its attendant power had been anomalous.

He'd been handling gestalts since then, to his very quiet dismay. He had enjoyed his primary function as an electrical engineer, and that had been an exceptionally good lab group; he hadn't wanted to be reposted. Many of Lord Megatron's brightest technological innovators had been stationed there, and they'd enjoyed very few restrictions on their methods (as long as they got _results_, anyway).

As far as he was concerned, he could serve the cause best doing what he'd been built and programmed to do—his massive size wasn't a result of military innovations, as most mechs assumed, but rather an experiment in alternative power systems designed by his creator, an electrical engineer of some renown before the war. He had been happy to follow in Powerarc's footsteps, to continue her work in Lord Megatron's name, and it had always rankled that he'd been unceremoniously yanked out of the lab to shepherd gestalt teams around battlefields.

His discontent was a closely-kept secret, though. Blackout took his duty as a Decepticon soldier too seriously to complain about his reassignment. If this was where his superiors thought he was best deployed, then so be it. He'd done his duty with pride and well—

Until now.

A soft chime sounded, drawing him from a reverie that had been about to turn unpleasant. Blackout was happy to leave off contemplation of his failure with the Stunticons and turn his attention to the alert blinking in the corner of the screen. He'd have to confront it eventually—he had to send a report, after all, and to do that he had to figure out what the frag the Autobots had done to his team—but not right now.

His guest in the cargo hold was awake.

Blackout acknowledged the alert and brought up the security feeds, picking the camera with the best view and enlarging the image across the giant screen in front of him. To his surprise—he'd instructed the system to alert him as soon as Knock Out had come back online—the medic was already as far as the elevator platform, fingers flying across the control panel. His back was to the camera, his face not visible, but the tension obvious in his hunched shoulders was still enough to make Blackout smirk. The freelancer had found the encryptions on the lift controls, then; the alarm he'd heard was the secondary one he'd programmed into the lock.

If this ship had been large enough to boast a brig, Blackout probably would have locked the medic in that. Failing one, he'd made do with the cargo bay. It wasn't an ideal situation, not with the hold full of weapons and supplies he might choose to utilize, but Blackout had to admit that the mech hadn't actually done anything to warrant his imprisonment. Blackout just didn't like him, and didn't want to have to deal with him until he so chose. He'd been more than willing to shut him away, but reluctant to restrain him further than that.

He watched until the medic gave up on the lift and slunk off, toggling between the cameras to keep him in view as he moved down the aisle. The little grounder was clearly nervous, moving with quick, tight steps and looking around with darting, restless optics. Blackout zoomed in and was rewarded with a jump—and those restless optics staring straight at the current camera.

The change that came over the other mech was immediate. He squared his shoulders and straightened up, looking away from the camera with a toss of his head. His stride when he started walking again was loose and easy. Everything about him oozed unconcern and confidence as he sauntered down the aisle between towers of cargo, even his precise, controlled movements as he started releasing the restraint braces and pulling down containers.

Blackout zoomed in again—not even a flinch this time?—watching closely as the medic seem to locate what he was looking for. The container that he thunked definitively down on the floor was one of his own, not one of the ones Breakdown had loaded. When he popped the lid, Blackout could see that it was full of—

Cosmetic supplies. Really?

Really. As Blackout watched, the medic pulled out a bottle of polish and a clean length of cloth from the crate. He sat primly on one of the other cases that he'd pulled down, afforded the camera a cool sidelong glance, and then began to polish himself.

It was a ruse. It had to be. The mech knew he was under observation, so surely the mundane task of seeing to his hygiene was a ploy to get Blackout to stop paying attention to him. And what would he do when he thought Blackout had grown bored of him and looked away? Try to decrypt the lock on the lift controls? Attempt to rifle through the containers from the base?

Blackout wasn't going to be fooled. He settled back in the pilot's cradle and watched with critical eyes. He watched as the medic buffed every undamaged bit of plating on his body. He watched him unpack a tool from the crate and start popping out dents, even the little ones that his self-repair would have handled eventually. He watched him carefully fill in scratches on his paint and scrub away scuffs.

When the medic started up another round of buffing, Blackout gave up in disgust. Either the little mech was ridiculously dedicated to the charade, or he was legitimately sitting there buffing himself instead of doing anything to improve his situation. Whichever it was, Blackout was tired of watching it.

He closed the view from the security feeds, although he left functional the alert that would let him know every time the medic tried the control panel for lift. He filled the now-empty space on the screen with instrument displays and readouts from the AI's main subprocessors, checking the ship's functions cursorily. Everything seemed to be operating as it should. Satisfied that the vessel wasn't going to skew out of control and self-destruct if he took a break, Blackout finally levered himself up out of the pilot's cradle. Hunching his head and shoulders, he stepped through the doorway.

The short corridor without soon opened into the common room, the biggest free space on this deck of the ship. Resettling his spines against his back with a rattle, Blackout straightened to his full height, glancing around. There wasn't much to see—the room was empty, and there wasn't much in it anyway. A couple of work terminals with big screens mounted over them, a simulator, and some seating comprised the furnishings; the room was obviously meant to function as a rec room. On a ship in this size class, he supposed it was better than nothing, but as rec rooms went, it wasn't impressive.

Doorways inset into the walls around the room opened onto other, smaller chambers—the medical and maintenance suite, energon storage, residential cabins with recharge hookups and dispensary lines. The biggest room would be the one at the other end of this one, tucked up under the bulkheads at the bow of the ship. That was the captain's cabin. He knew, thanks to schematics the AI had provided from the vessel's databanks, that the only full size, reclining recharge berth on the ship was in there, and he intended to claim it for his own use when he finally let himself go down for recharge

But before he could let himself go to the rest his systems yearned for, he still had one last duty to discharge. He had to check on Breakdown.

The last Stunticon had claimed one of the smaller crew cabins early in the flight out of the planetary system, shutting himself inside. Blackout had only been able to check on him periodically, but every time he had, Breakdown had been there. A wireless ping to the ship's systems returned Breakdown's present location—still inside, where he'd apparently stayed for the entire flight so far. Blackout crossed to the appropriate doorway and pressed the chime, requesting entry.

There was no immediate response, although within he could hear desultory cursing and the occasional rattle. There was a loud crunch, and then the door shuddered and started to open. It stuck at half-aperture, opening the rest of the way only when Breakdown forced it. Blackout knew without having to examine the now-damaged mechanism that it wasn't likely to close again without repairs.

Breakdown's only greeting was a grunted, "Energon dispenser is broken."

Blackout frowned faintly. The ship's computers had of course made him aware of the damage that Breakdown had been dealing his chosen room, but he'd ignored it at the time, and he wasn't impressed now. Damages could always be fixed, and there were other cabins on the ship anyway.

"More than just the dispenser," he remarked, optics flicking to the doorway.

Breakdown shrugged disinterestedly and backed out of the threshold to admit Blackout. "It was an accident."

"I'm sure it was." Blackout stepped inside, his optics roving as he took stock of the damages. Breakdown had always had a tendency to exorcise his frustrations with action, and he'd dealt more than a little violence in here while Blackout had been shut away in the bridge. Dents dimpled the walls liberally, and even the floor and the ceiling boasted their share of impacts. The berth—a compact upright model, not one of the bigger reclining ones—was overturned in the corner; an impressive feat, given that upright berths were built for sturdiness. There was a smear of energon on the wall, under the damaged dispenser, and a pool of it on the floor. The fresh-spilt tang of it was overpowering.

"Something of a mess you've made in here," Blackout remarked.

"Yeah." Breakdown watched Blackout dully, his sullen optics half-shuttered. "You need something, or what?"

"Well, one of us should probably stop the energon leak." The damage to the dispenser was fresh—possibly the crunch he'd heard before the door had opened—and it was still dripping sluggishly.

Breakdown's shoulders slumped and he looked away. "You do it," he ground out, his voice rough. "I'm useless."

"If you were useless, you wouldn't have done nearly this much damage in here," Blackout said carefully.

"So? What good is a buncha dents?" Breakdown grimaced and turned away from Blackout. "I've lost everything. What's the point in staying online?" He sighed and looked down at his hands, flexing the thick fingers slowly. "You know what? I got half a mind to go give that medic a talkin' to. With my fists. What right has he got to do this to me, huh?" His voice had risen by the end to a gruff shout, and he shook a fist that vibrated like it was about to transform.

Blackout had to admit, the thought of Breakdown bringing his hammers to bear on the smarmy little medic was appealing. He knew he should probably be intervening, talking the mech down from his rage and doing what he could to help him come to terms with his loss. Gestalt teams that lost a member, even two, could typically bear the upset and carry on. They might no longer be capable of combining, but they could still fight, still contribute to the cause in some capacity.

The problem was that Blackout wasn't sure Breakdown could be pulled through this, not alone. Losing all four bondmates was a very different thing from losing one or two. The gestalt team that survived a trauma like this was the one where the members could help each other, providing the intimate support necessary to get past the broken bonds. Breakdown didn't have that support. Blackout would do what he could, of course, and if there was any handler equipped to deal with this it was him, but he didn't think it would be enough. He wasn't part of Breakdown's team. He didn't even like Breakdown all that much personally—the Stunticons had been a fractious and quarrelsome group, all of them difficult to get along with. While it was to his credit that Breakdown had been generally obedient—which was more than could be said of Motormaster or Wildrider—he had always seemed dull and uninteresting to Blackout. He'd never bothered trying to get close.

And now, because of that, he didn't know what it would take to get Breakdown through this alive. So why not let him have a go at the medic? Breakdown had always been better at talking with his hands than with words, and if it would help him, it was worth doing. And if it wouldn't…

Well, the medic would be hurting, and there was a petty little part of Blackout—the part still infuriated by his violation at Knock Out's hands—that was all right with that.

"Shall I unlock the lift controls for you?"

Whatever response Breakdown had been expecting, it obviously wasn't that one. "What? R-really?" he asked, obviously startled.

"Really. Just don't deactivate him—hn, or injure him too grievously. I don't want to have to waste my time fixing him up."

For a moment, Breakdown hesitated, clearly uncertain what to make of this permission. Blackout knew that it was out of character with his tendency to preach self-restraint, especially when it came to unnecessary physical violence, but this was a special case. He stepped aside and indicated the doorway with a hand.

A hint of a smile appeared on Breakdown's face, and he left the room without another word. Blackout followed him decorously, lifting the encryptions on the elevator control and watching Breakdown step onto the platform and descend through the floor to the deck below. It was only after the hatchway irised closed that he turned, finally seeking the berth that was waiting for him in the biggest cabin.

A thin smirk, hard and cruel, touched his mouth for a moment as he walked. 

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading!<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Elemental for beta-reading this for me, and special thanks to SixthClone/Dirge, without whom this story would have died miserably around chapter 4. You _are_ my Breakdown, Dirge; I wouldn't be able to do this without you! 

* * *

><p>It didn't come as a surprise to Knock Out that he was being watched, though that first soft whirr of the camera focusing on him had startled him badly. They were keeping him captive down here, after all; it only made sense that they'd want to see how their prisoner reacted to his confinement. Maybe they were hoping he'd throw a tantrum, lobbing useless threats or trying to escape.<p>

He'd have to disappoint them on that count. He was outnumbered and badly outclassed, and he wasn't sure he could count on the ship to aid him. He'd heard all the stories, of course, the tales they used to tell about pilots grew so close to their vessels that their ships' AIs would fight to defend them. Certainly career pilots were protective of their charges—not that there were all that many of them left anymore. They'd been too specialized, no good for anything more than piloting. It had proven easier to adapt a ship to a mediocre pilot than turn a pilot into a mediocre warrior, and so pilots who died had not been replaced.

Knock Out knew he was only a mediocre pilot, and tried to make it up to his ship by keeping it in excellent repair. He couldn't help but wonder if the AI had resisted at all when the brutes who'd locked him down here had taken control of it.

He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. The ship's AI didn't have much a personality, but it was the only companion he'd had for a long time. If it had turned itself over to another mech without complaint, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

It was a surprisingly unpleasant thought, though Knock Out was careful not to let that show on his face now that he knew he was watched. In fact, the only thing he was showing right now was casual unconcern, forcing himself to move with his usual grace and ease down the aisle. Passing towers of unfamiliar cargo from the base, he reached his own things and started hunting through the containers, dropping them haphazardly until he found the one he was looking for. This one he dropped too, heavily, and fell to his knees in front of it. Struggling to conceal the desperate eagerness he felt for the contents, he popped the lid and started digging through.

Waxes, polish, clean chamois cloths as soft against his plating as the touch of sparklight. Only the finest tools in the trade of keeping himself handsome, and even these were just extras, spares in storage until he needed them. His main kit, of course, was on the upper deck, in his cabin.

His main kit was as unreachable as Cybertron right now. This would have to do.

Nudging one of the other crates into position, Knock Out sat and carefully selected a cloth and one of the polishes. He glanced over at the nearest camera, but looked away quickly. He knew how to make this a _show_ for his unseen captors, if he wanted, but he didn't. This was for him, not them.

As he'd hoped it would, as it always did, the ritual relaxed him. Most mechs, he knew, saw this as a chore or a frivolity—plenty of them had told him as much to his face, demanding to know why he wasted time and resources on his plating like this. Jealous types, Knock Out always thought, made too conscious of their scarred, dinged, dirty exteriors when he stood next to them. Undisciplined types, who didn't have the patience a good, thorough buffing demanded, who couldn't comprehend the sacrifices he had to make sometimes, or why it was so important to keep himself looking this good.

For the first time since he'd woken up, his servos loosened, finally, legitimately relaxing as he scrubbed the cloth over the familiar contours of his plating. If he kept his eyes closed, he could almost pretend he was in the back room of his shop, cleaning up after a long day with clients. Pretend he was in his residence, preparing to go out and watch the races—or perhaps to tool around himself in the informal amateur leagues, maybe not as fast as the others but certainly the prettiest one on the street. Pretend he was in some unfamiliar washrack, cleaning away the evidence of a night well spent with a friend or a lover or maybe just a chance-met stranger.

He could pretend he was home. Cybertron never seemed so painfully near and so unreachably distant as when his mind wandered during a buffing. Still, Knock Out refused to relinquish the reverie. These were badly needed right now, his memories of a time and a place where no one who didn't have an explicit invitation touched his exoplate.

The light buffing was over sooner than he would have liked, but he wasn't done yet. Knock Out tossed aside the soiled rag and rooted around in the container again, coming up with an old and well used dent remover. With care, he searched out every dimple in his plating, popping them out as he found them. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but brief, and the satisfaction of smoothing his chassis out overwhelmed the little pains. Just for the pleasure of it, he ran his hands over his abdominal plating when he was done, enjoying the feel of the unbroken contours under his hands.

Next was doctoring his scratches and scrapes. Oh, he could wait for his self-repair to fill them in on its own time, of course, just like he could have waited for his dents to pop themselves out. But why, when a little bit of immediate intervention could have him looking good again instantly?

There was even a canister of the appropriate stimulant buried in a corner of the crate. Knock Out drew it out and twisted off the cap, dabbing a bit on the tip of one sharp finger and watching critically. After a moment, the plating heated up slightly, smoothing and starting to gleam as even the most minute imperfections repaired themselves.

Good, it was still viable then. He applied the liquid—sparingly—to every scratch he could find on his plating, triggering dozens of little hot spots where the self-repair nanos that kept him healthy responded to the chemical signal and went into overdrive. It was a very temporary effect, but enough to heal every major scrape in his paint job.

The heat faded as soon as the nanos returned to their baseline activity levels, but Knock Out's sense of satisfaction remained.

Taking up another clean cloth and a canister of wax, he started buffing again. He went slower this time, careful to make sure he ministered to every exposed bit of plating that he had. Time constraints occasionally required him to skip this step, and he was looking forward to pursuing it to completion right now—which was why it seemed almost inevitable that he was interrupted by the sound of the lift platform engaging and rising towards the ceiling.

So watching him wasn't enough for his captors, then. Knock Out recapped the wax and dropped his rag aside, his whole body tensing where he sat on the crate. It felt like he was frozen, all his servos and joints locked into place, like he couldn't look away from the now-descending lift and the hulking form standing on it.

A big form, but not Blackout's huge one. The angular silhouette and blue and white paint job identified Breakdown, who looked even more tense and unhappy than Knock Out felt right now. Fists clenched tightly at his sides, he stepped off the lift and stalked down the aisle towards Knock Out, his tread heavy enough to be felt through the floor. The frown on his face was ugly and foreboding.

"You," he growled, pointing as soon as he was close enough to level a blunt finger at Knock Out. "We gotta talk. Now."

All too aware of the care he would need to take with this angry stranger, Knock Out rose smoothly to his feet and fixed his most polite smile on his face. "Of course," he said, deliberately keeping his optics fixed on the other mech's face instead of his huge, fisted hands. He indicated the scattered crates with a sweeping gesture. "Can I offer you a seat?"

"No." The pointing finger dropped but the mech stomped closer. "And I oughta offer you a fist in the face. Where do you get off, doing this to me?"

The threat wiped the smile off Knock Out's mouth, and he couldn't help retreating, scrambling backwards and away from the other grounder. He didn't even realize that he was being backed against a wall of crates until Breakdown had him cornered, and then he couldn't believe he'd been so careless.

"I—I'm afraid I don't really understand—ah—, " What the big deal was? Why Breakdown and Blackout both insisted on treating him like he'd committed treason or cold murder or some other heinous crime, when all he'd done was save a life? He knew better than to phrase it quite like that, though, and instead spread his hands and tried to look as harmless as possible as he said, "—why you take such offense?"

Breakdown loomed close enough to poke a finger into Knock Out's chest. He tried to flinch away, but there was nowhere to go and the sound of metal on newly-repaired-metal made him wince.

"'Course you don't," the bigger mech said. "You fragged around with something you didn't understand and now I'm stuck like this!" He grabbed Knock Out's shoulder hard enough to dimple the plating under his hand, pinning him back against the wall of crates.

Knock Out squirmed, pushing at his wrist and trying to wriggle away. "Stuck like what?" he demanded, hearing the thin edge of panicked static in his voice as he said it but unable to control it.

He didn't even see the fist coming until it slammed against the crate beside his head, shattering the electronics of the label display. "Completely slagging _useless_!" Breakdown bellowed.

Knock Out flinched again, jerking futilely against the grip on his shoulder. Scowling, Breakdown flung him away, hard enough that he tripped when he stumbled into one of the crates on the floor. He fell heavily, sprawling gracelessly against a second container. "You're functioning, aren't you?" he pointed out desperately.

Breakdown pivoted slowly to face him, shaking shards of the label screen off his knuckles as he did. "Yeah. Sure. I'm functioning." His deep voice was quiet, and surprisingly bitter. He loomed large over Knock Out, kicking the crate away; the medic crumpled to a heap at the bigger mech's feet.

"But what good is that to anyone?" Breakdown continued, leering down at him. He nudged Knock Out with a toe. "We were made to work _together_—don't you get that?" The foot lifted like he was going to stomp.

Fighting to keep his sudden surge of acute fear off his face, Knock Out shrugged helplessly. There were a lot of informational gambits he could make right now—bluff, lie, derail—but it seemed best to settle for the simplest. He told the truth. "No. I don't suppose you'd be so good as to explain?"

It obviously wasn't the answer the other mech expected. Breakdown hesitated, huffed, and then slowly put his foot back down. He crossed his arms, frowning again. "You know what a gestalt is?" he asked finally.

"Of course." Gestalt technology had been hailed as the innovation that would win the Decepticons the war. He'd already been on his own, out here on the fringes of Cybertronian space, when they'd made the breakthrough, and he'd still gotten an audial full of the hype. Who didn't know what gestalts were?

"Good. My team was one of them." The bigger mech's strange optics narrowed, their unusual yellow light seeming to intensify behind the shutters. "Got any idea what it's like?"

Knock Out could only shrug. "I know you all combine. That's about it."

"Figures." Breakdown huffed again, shaking his head. "I thought maybe you did this to look good for Blackout or somebody, but now I know you're just stupid."

"Hey!" The assertion was enough to prick Knock Out's pride, damaged though it already was. He was tired of being called stupid by these mechs who didn't even know him. He hurried back to his feet even as Breakdown was turning away, grabbing at his shoulder armor before he could think about what he was doing and trying to turn the other mech back towards him. In that single careless moment, all he wanted to do was defend his besmirched intelligence.

He realized just how rash he'd been when the other grounder's giant hand came around and grabbed him by the throat. Immediately his vision was flooded with warnings—the components there were still delicate, barely healed from his last throttling, and his systems were screaming at him for letting this happen again. He scrabbled at Breakdown's hand, fingertips gouging long scratches into the plating despite the fact that the other mech wasn't actually holding very tightly. "Is the v-violence really necessary, my friend?" he rasped.

"Not your friend," Breakdown growled. "And you're a medic. You oughta know about this stuff!" He released him with a shove.

Knock Out laughed compulsively, nervous and maybe a little hysterical, and rapidly put some space between the two of them. "My training is a little…outdated," he admitted, honest inasmuch as the statement was true. It was less his training and more his information, but what medical handbooks he had _definitely_ predated gestalt technology.

The bigger mech only stared at him for a long, silent moment, before shaking his head. "By a couple of centuries, yeah." Breakdown heaved a sigh that seemed to depressurize him, shoulders slumping and fists relaxing.

"We were bonded," he said after a long pause, looking away. "All of us. That's how gestalts can stay in tune with each other so well."

Gestalt teams were _bonded_? The knowledge was like the shock of cold water in delicate mechanisms, like servos locking up and stripping gears—unexpected, unpleasant. _Bonded?_ And Breakdown had lost all four of those bondmates, all at once.

Suddenly, Blackout's dire comment about spark trauma came into crystal focus.

"I'm sorry," Knock Out said, his voice small and helpless. The revelation had shocked him badly enough that his words were genuine. "I didn't know."

The big grounder's hands balled into fists again. "Shoulda asked Blackout," he said, his optics flashing as he swung his gaze back to Knock Out. "Because of you, I feel like I'm one wheel on a vehicle that needs five. How'm I supposed to go anywhere like that?"

"Is there… anything…I can do to help you, ah, acclimate…?" he asked awkwardly. Knock Out usually didn't ascribe to any of that moralistic scrap about a medic's duty to heal, but he couldn't help but make the offer now. Losing just one bonded could be enough to incapacitate, even kill if the mech in question didn't have a strong spark. Losing four simultaneously… It felt wrong, to leave Breakdown floundering now that he knew the full import of what he'd done.

"Y'know, I came down here to pound your face in," Breakdown said slowly, and hesitated long enough that Knock Out began looking for signs that the other mech was about to take a swing. When he finally continued, though, his voice was nothing so much as tired. "But I don't even care anymore." Optics on the floor, he started forward, shouldering roughly past Knock Out. "Just leave me alone," he muttered.

"As you wish," Knock Out said immediately, stepping neatly out of the way and letting him pass.

Breakdown stalked back down the aisle towards the lift, pausing only once to look back. Knock Out met his gaze, unable to help but notice that a bit of the bright flash had returned to his optics. He lifted a big finger and pointed. "You missed a spot, by the way."

The comment was so unexpected, so incongruous in the context of all the damages Breakdown had just caused with his own two hands, that Knock Out could only shake his head. "You're kidding," he muttered, but he turned to look where the other mech was pointing, and there it was, a rogue scuff on a spot he _always_ missed, a cranny that was difficult to reach on his own.

Surprised, he looked back up at the other mech, but Breakdown was already at the other end of the aisle, attention on the lift controls. The big grounder didn't look back again as the elevator engaged and bore him towards the opening hatch in the ceiling.

Knock Out stared until Breakdown was gone. Then, as soon as he was sure of his solitude, he reached for his discarded polishing cloth and attacked the offending scuff, his expression thoughtful as he rubbed the blight out of existence. 

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Thanks for reading!

I'm afraid there'll be a bit of a break before the next chapter goes up- 09 is proving exceedingly difficult to write, and working on it has eaten the entirety of my buffer of finished chapters. But bear with me, and I hope to get it to you guys ASAP!


	9. Chapter 9

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Elemental for beta-reading this for me, and special thanks to SixthClone/Dirge, without whom this story would have died miserably around chapter 4. You _are_ my Breakdown, Dirge; I wouldn't be able to do this without you!

* * *

><p>"You missed a spot, by the way." Though Breakdown's voice was bland as he pointed out the scuff, the naked look of shocked indignation on the other mech's face was enough to turn up the corners of his mouth. Only slightly, and immediately he remembered saying the same thing to Drag Strip, the same expression on the smallest Stunticon's face, and he had to turn away.<p>

The comparison was too easy to make. This Knock Out was small like Drag Strip, his plating shined the same way, the same smooth grace imbued every line and movement of his body. Drag Strip was beautiful and protective of his beauty and so was the medic and a cycle ago, just thinking that thought would have made Breakdown's hands itch to do a little dirty work. He'd been so damn _ready_ to beat the bolts out of the other mech when he'd come down here, and now the urge was gone.

The aching void in his chest had smothered it, like it felt like it was smothering _everything_.

He'd even tried. Damn it, he'd tried! He'd had the volante pinned and scared and he'd taken the first swing and then he'd _missed_. As if it wasn't bad enough that he could barely think straight, now he couldn't even punch straight? It hadn't mattered when he'd been assaulting the stationary furnishings in his room—lashing out at the berth, the energon dispenser, the _walls_, just to feel metal buckle under his knuckles, just to feel _anything_—but as soon as he'd tried to hit a moving target he'd missed.

And it was a moving target he'd been holding in place.

Embarrassment shuffled him across the room as fast as he could place his feet and not trip over them. He stepped up onto the lift platform and with carefully deliberate movements activated it, gripping the control plinth tightly to keep himself from swaying as it headed for the ceiling. He didn't turn to look back; if Knock Out was anything like Drag Strip, he'd be scrambling to fix the scuff, and Breakdown didn't want to be reminded any further of Drag Strip right now.

Once it was through the hatch, the platform docked into place with a bing. Breakdown stepped down off it, through a doorway, and into the common room. There were a few seats scattered around and he sunk heavily into the nearest one, closing his eyes and bringing up his diagnostics.

They didn't find anything. His body had been malfunctioning since he'd first woken up with a hole in his spark, but every time he ran internal diagnostics, they came up clean. He stumbled if he walked without attention, his gyros glitched if he stood or turned too quickly, it could take him more than one try to grasp something he was reaching for, yet his diagnostics kept coming up clean.

He knew he ought to be worried, but it was hard. It was like everything he wanted to feel had to come up through the big freezing hole in his chest before he could experience it. Most of it never made it, and what did was weak and fleeting, just like his desire to pound Knock Out into scrap.

Purging his vents in a sigh, Breakdown opened his eyes and sat up in his seat. He glanced around the empty room disinterestedly, not seeing anything that was worth looking at until his optics reached the door to the big cabin. That was where Blackout had disappeared to, he realized slowly. It was the only cabin on-ship big enough to fit him—and the only door off the main room that was locked.

Blackout had locked him out.

He hadn't really been surprised that the massive flight-capable hadn't been waiting for him when he'd returned from the cargo bay. If anything, it had been a relief; Blackout's absence meant Breakdown didn't have to explain why he was back so soon and why he hadn't done what he'd said he would.

But that relief was short-lived. Breakdown might not have wanted to have to explain himself to Blackout, but that didn't mean he wanted to be ignored by him.

He knew he could get into that room if he wanted to, and part of him definitely wanted to. Blackout had never liked him very much, but he _was_ supposed to be responsible for the Stunticons. Breakdown might have been the only one left, but that didn't mean Blackout could shirk his duty as handler. He figured all he'd have to do was start pounding, and either Blackout would unlock it and let him in or he'd break through and be inside anyway. Blackout wouldn't be able to ignore him then, would he?

It was an appealing thought, but only for the moment it took him to remember Blackout remaining aloof from all of them—except for when his hand was on Wildrider's shoulder and Wildrider was grinning up at him like he was the sixth Stunticon. Blackout had always acted like he was better than them, just because he was older, because he could fly, because he was bigger and stronger, because he'd been some kind of scientist once. He'd decided very early on that Wildrider was the only one who could keep up with him and dismissed Breakdown and the others.

Blackout wasn't the only one in their unit who'd had a superiority complex, of course, but it was different with Motormaster or Drag Strip than it was with their handler. Blackout wasn't part of the team; there'd been no way to touch his spark and see that he had insecurities like the rest of them. There had been no way to remind him that he wasn't so great but to tell him, and Blackout never believed it when they did, not even when it came from Wildrider. They could usually bring Drag Strip or Motormaster back down when their egos got out of control, but Blackout had always been beyond them, indifferent.

Breakdown knew he wasn't the smartest mech ever sparked, but he wasn't so thick that he didn't realize Blackout thought he was dumb. He had just never realized how damn _little_ Blackout thought of him. That had to be why this mech who was supposed to be in charge of him had shut himself into a cabin and locked Breakdown out when he needed him the most.

He wouldn't have thought he could feel more alone than he had when he'd first realized what the cold emptiness in his spark meant, but somehow, Blackout had managed to make it happen.

He turned away from the door fast enough to make himself sway, and found himself looking at the hatch that led to energon storage. He stared blankly at the door for a moment, then with slightly more interest as exactly what he was looking at penetrated the numbing blanket smothering him.

Energon? That sounded like a pretty good idea.

Walking carefully so he didn't stumble, he crossed the room to the door in question and palmed it open. Inside, most of the space was taken up by the reservoir of liquid energon that fed the dispensers in the individual cabins and the machinery that controlled it, but on the other side of the room there were cabinets, and inside the cabinets were cubes.

According to the labels, most of them were medical grade, and he knew well enough to stay away from those. He found what he was looking for on the bottom-most shelf of one of the cabinets: high-grade energon, glowing intensely blue-white in cubes smaller than all the rest. He knew from experience that size was deceptive, and it wouldn't take many of them to get his systems running hot, no matter how little they were.

He gathered as many as he could safely hold, clearing out most of a shelf. Maybe with enough high-grade, he couldn't help thinking, the cold place in his spark might burn away. Maybe he could fill it with the fuzzy fire of overcharging.

Maybe he'd able to forget, at least for a little while, how damn _alone_ he was now. 

* * *

><p>All things considered, the brute had not injured him too badly. Dents and scrapes Knock Out could of course take care of, and as soon as Breakdown was gone, he did, tending to the new blemishes with his usual precise attention. He resumed buffing himself once his finish had been restored, but the interruption had ruined the magic of the ritual. Even though he lingered over it, it didn't calm him down the way it usually did.<p>

In fact, it felt like his systems were crawling with excess power, an illusory overcharge that made it impossible for him to be still. He supposed he should be glad for this evidence that his defensive subroutines were still functioning, but he couldn't help but wish they'd kicked on a bit earlier, or that they'd stopped functioning once the danger had passed. Breakdown had already been stomping away by the time his body had dumped all this energy, and now he was spoiling for action even after the time he'd spent buffing himself.

He packed away his things with jerky motions and stacked aside the haphazard tumble of crates on the floor so he could pace restlessly up and down the aisle between the rest of the cargo containers. The mindless physical motion served to burn off some of the delayed energy crackling along his circuits, but it couldn't rein in his racing mind.

That had been too damn close, and the fact that he wasn't beaten to scrap right now was cold comfort. After all, it wasn't any intervention on Knock Out's part that had given Breakdown pause, but only the other mech's own issues. Knock Out counted on being able to get a read on the mechs around him, on being able to determine what mental buttons to push and levers to pull to influence the outcomes of precarious situations in his favor, but Breakdown—and the absent Blackout as well—were still mysteries to him. He had no idea what made them tick, and it put him as much at a disadvantage with the pair as his inferior size. Breakdown could lumber right back down into the cargo bay in the next moment, to pick up where he'd left off, and it wouldn't matter then how much raw energy his self-defense subroutines pumped into his body. Knock Out wouldn't bet on himself in that confrontation.

What he needed was something to even the playing field. He needed to know more about his captors.

The frantic staccato of his footsteps slowed as he gazed thoughtfully at the stacked containers towering over him. He had no doubt that the crates from the base contained a wealth of information about his tormentors, but getting at it was not without risk. If he was still under observation, he doubted he'd get the chance to learn anything before they were descending on him.

So the first step, then, was to find out if he was still being watched. It wasn't very likely that Breakdown had installed himself at a terminal to spy as soon as he'd returned to the upper decks, but the absent Blackout was still unaccounted for. He had no way of knowing what the massive flight-capable was up to up there.

But he knew how he could find out. The wireless uplink to his ship still beckoned, a constant presence in the corner of his HUD that he hadn't yet dared acknowledge. If Blackout was jacked into the _Vitalis'_ systems—

If, if, if. If he let himself be paralyzed into passivity by 'ifs', he deserved anything his captors dealt him.

He engaged the uplink.

Before he could even request anything, his HUD was flooded with information—current location and trajectory vectors, an alarming number of damage notifications, and security feeds on both Blackout and Breakdown, among other things. It was enough to make him reel, shuttering his optics and catching his helm in his hands as he tried to make sense of the crush of data. "Enough, enough, _stop_—!" he said, and just as immediately as it hard started, the flow of information halted.

He found a suitable crate among those still stacked randomly up against the wall of cargo and sat, fingers moving in little flicks as he sorted through the glyphs crowding his vision. He prioritized the security feeds monitoring his captors, minimizing everything else for the moment and concentrating on them. Neither mech seemed to be currently accessing the ship's systems, for which he was profoundly grateful.

More than that, neither mech seemed to be conscious. Blackout was arranged in careful repose on the berth in what Knock Out realized was his own cabin. He indulged a flash of anger and violation, but only a brief one—after all, he could always reconfigure the berth back to his specifications later, and the room didn't appear to have been disordered otherwise.

Breakdown, it appeared, had found Knock Out's store of high-grade energon. He was slumped on the floor in the common room, one arm thrown awkwardly against the interface for the sim terminal, his face hidden against the plinth. A glowing cube was cupped in his other hand and there were empties scattered on the floor around him. He wasn't moving. If he wasn't in stasis lock yet, he probably would be soon.

_Good._ That meant Knock Out had some time.

"All right," he murmured, one slender hand to his helm like he was sending a comm. He wasn't, though; there was no need to comm _Vitalis_. It could pick him up from anywhere inside it, unless he specifically disabled its audio sensors in a given room. "Show me what's wrong."

Immediately the damage readouts bloomed big and bright across his HUD, and Knock Out perused them with an increasing sense of despair. He made a point of taking exquisite care of his vessel, but his captors didn't seem to share his preoccupation. In the short time they'd had control of the ship, they'd managed to wreak havoc. There were damages internal and external, and while nothing was enough to seriously impact the performance of _Vitalis_, the AI that controlled it was still distressed. Knock Out's hands itched to soothe its hurts, but there was nothing he could do from down here.

Instead, he offered the only balm he could: he tapped into the ship's perceptive nets and minimized its physical awareness of the injuries. It wasn't a real solution—_Vitalis_ knew it was still damaged, it just couldn't feel the injuries anymore—but it was better than letting the ship suffer.

It was all he could do for now. He had to secure his own safety before he could do anything further for his ship.

Sure now that he had some time in which to work undisturbed, Knock Out returned to his feet and glanced around again. There were an overwhelming number of containers that weren't his, but he knew already exactly where he wanted to start—with the one Breakdown had damaged.

A close examination of the smashed label revealed that, as he'd hoped, it wasn't just the display that had been broken but the adjoined micro-computer as well. When Knock Out pulled the crate out of its braces and set it on the floor, he was able to pry the lid loose with minimum effort.

The rest of the containers were sure to be locked, but he would deal with them when he got to them. For now, he would concentrate on this windfall and hope that it contained something, _anything_ he could use to improve his situation. 

* * *

><p>Though Blackout was sure he could have remained in recharge for just as long as he'd spent awake, he didn't grant himself the leisure; an internal alarm brought him out of stasis as soon as he'd rested long enough to ensure adequate function. His mind was clear as he woke up, which was what really mattered, but he couldn't help wincing at the way his servos groaned as he levered himself upright on the berth.<p>

His processor, it seemed, had slept better than his body.

Fuel would probably help with that. His vigil in the cockpit of the ship had drained him, and though recharge hadn't depleted his levels any further, neither had it replenished them. He disengaged the hookups connecting him to the berth and got carefully to his feet, hunching his head and shoulders to keep from knocking them into the ceiling. _Ridiculous_, that even the biggest cabin on the ship would be this cramped, but grumbling about it wasn't going to change the room's dimensions.

Instead he knelt before the energon dispenser in the wall and pulled himself a cube. He'd need to check later how much energon they had onboard—it would almost certainly need to be carefully rationed between the three of them if it was going to last—but right now he didn't care to restrict his intake. He needed the fuel, and he would have it.

Settling himself to a seat against the berth, Blackout accessed his uplink to the ship's computers while he sipped his cube. The AI was slow to respond, transferring the information he requested to him sluggishly over the wireless connection. The delay was enough to make him frown, but the ship was reporting no major glitches, malfunctions, or changes while he'd been recharging, and that mattered more than how slowly it was providing him with the data.

Finished with his cube and his check on the status of the ship, Blackout fed the empty back into the dispenser and left the cabin. He straightened back to his full height as he stepped into the common room, stabilizing spines rustling and resettling with the movement of their mount on his shoulders. A brief survey of the room—which he'd expected to be empty and unchanged from when he passed through it on his way to recharge—revealed that the ship had perhaps been mistaken in reporting that all was well.

Breakdown was sprawled in the doorway to the maintenance bay. Even across the room, Blackout could hear the erratic rise and fall of his engine, and smell the lightning tang of spilled energon. Another, more attentive assessment of the room revealed a welter of tiny empty cubes, scattered in erratic clumps across the floor in an uneven trail from energon storage to maintenance bay. High-grade?

Scrap, even a mech with an exceptional tolerance wouldn't be able to handle this much high-grade. And Breakdown had always had a strangely delicate disposition when it came to holding his energon.

Alarm making his plating prickle, Blackout hurried across the room and crouched at Breakdown's side. To his utter surprise, the last Stunticon was _awake_, groaning wordlessly when Blackout's hands touched his armor. His eyes even tracked over to Blackout's looming form, although the tell-tale whirr of the optical mechanisms focusing was absent.

Using his hold on Breakdown's armor, Blackout attempted maneuver to the mech to a somewhat more comfortable seat against the wall. Breakdown resisted clumsily, his feet kicking against the floor and his hands clutching at Blackout's arms hard enough to leave dents. He protested, but the words were slurred almost to incomprehensibility.

"Hold still," Blackout commanded once he was sure the other mech wouldn't pitch over as soon as he was released. "And let me in." He reached for Breakdown's helm, the paneling over his wrist port already sliding open.

Breakdown grabbed Blackout's wrist and forced his hand away with surprising strength for how incapacitated he seemed to be otherwise. "Not you," he mumbled, a little clearer than before. "Dead End. Where's Dead End? Saw 'im in the medbay but I can't…can't find 'im…" He trailed off, craning his head like he was trying to see around the bulk of Blackout's body.

"…When did you see him?" Blackout asked slowly.

Breakdown looked back at him, then away again. "Jus' a minute ago!" He struggled to rise to his feet, but was so uncoordinated that it was easy for Blackout to push him back down.

"He's not here," he said, still frowning but some of the cold bite leeched out of his voice. It was a worrying sign, if Breakdown really thought he'd seen Dead End.

"Saw him!" Breakdown insisted. "Went into the medbay, with 'Rider." He sat up a little straighter, the words coming easier suddenly. "He asked me to go get 'Rider's arm so he could put it back on, but…" He trailed off, like he'd lost the thread of his story, and Blackout reached for him again. Now he was claiming to have seen two of his dead teammates?

Breakdown batted Blackout's hands away, then covered the very center of his chassis with his own. "Somethin' don't feel right. Want him t' look at me, and—and there isn't even any of 'Rider's arm left anyway. That stupid grenade blew the whole thing to shrapnel."

The words prompted an unmistakable sense of déjà vu, enough that Blackout sat back, his own optics unfocusing slightly as his processor raced through memory files, trying to find the triggered conversation. He went cold as it came up. Unless he was badly mistaken, Breakdown wasn't just hallucinating or delusional. Some of what he'd just muttered matched perfectly with Blackout's memory of a recent incident involving one of Wildrider's prototypes. At the time, though, Breakdown hadn't claimed anything was wrong or that he needed to see Dead End himself—he'd just had a brief conversation with Blackout and hurried off to salvage what he could of the limb at Dead End's behest.

He blinked away the memory file and focused back down on Breakdown. "His targeted fragmentation grenade prototype?" he asked carefully.

"Yeah. He didn't even get to test the glitching stupid thing. It just blew up." That was a line straight out of the remembered conversation, although Breakdown's expression hadn't been quite so muddled then. The way he curled forward over his chest now was also novel. "He c'n wait. Need Dead End. But he disappeared." His eyes were still unfocused as he lunged at Blackout suddenly, fixing clumsy fingers around a ridge in his armor and hauling him close with wild strength. "You gotta help me!"

"I will," Blackout promised with a nod. He took Breakdown's arms like he was going to help him to his feet and yanked him forward instead, unbalancing him, his own strength more than a match for Breakdown's uncontrolled power. The last of the Stunticons overbalanced, slamming face first to the floor with an incoherent cry. Blackout was on him immediately, holding him down and prying into the plating covering the cranial port at the back of his head.

Ignoring Breakdown's ineffectual resistance, he made the connection, uploading the override codes that he'd been given when he'd been assigned to handle this particular gestalt. Breakdown shut obediently down into stasis lock beneath him.

This wasn't the help that Breakdown meant, but it was the best Blackout could do. Disengaging, he closed the panel with a click and turned the big grounder over. He scooped Breakdown into his arms—the other mech's panzere frame was a challenge even for a tyton like himself, but he could manage long enough to deposit Breakdown on the one slab in the maintenance bay.

Once he had Breakdown settled, he headed for the lift down to the cargo hold.

He hoped Breakdown mech had left the medic in a state fit to work. 

* * *

><p><strong>A note on terminology:<strong> 'Volante', 'panzere', and 'tyton' are all names for various headcanon model types that I've developed for TFP 'verse. Volante and panzere (Knock Out and Breakdown respectively) are both grounder models, and tyton (Blackout) is a massive flight-capable model. I did my best to include sufficient context clues to indicate who was what in the body of the story.

If you'd like more information on the model types in my system, there's an info post about it up on my DreamWidth account, therizinosaur. (You can find it through either the 'meta' or 'fandom: transformers' tags, both of which are accessible on the right sidebar of my account.

Additionally, as you may have noticed, Knock Out's ship has finally received a name and that name is _Vitalis_. I thought it was overdue for one, heh, and at some point I'll probably retcon it into the earlier chapters too.

Thank you for your patience during the long delay between the last chapter and this one, and as always , thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Elemental for beta-reading this for me, and special thanks to SixthClone/Dirge, without whom this story would have died miserably around chapter 4. You _are_ my Breakdown, Dirge; I wouldn't be able to do this without you! 

* * *

><p>Knock Out was elbow deep in a disorganized container of weapons when <em>Vitalis<em> warned him that Blackout was coming back online. He hurried to clean up the evidence of his snooping, piling everything back into the crate haphazardly and hoping as he did that the rough treatment didn't activate something. He'd been exquisitely careful in unpacking it in the first place, intrigued despite his habitual disinterest in firepower by the unusual weaponry inside, but he couldn't afford that care now.

By the time _Vitalis_ informed him that Blackout was awake and accessing its systems, Knock Out had slapped on the top, resealed the container, and heaved it back into place among the others. Satisfied that Blackout wouldn't find anything incriminating if he decided to start his day with a little spying, Knock Out made one last, hasty survey of the aisle as he retreated towards the niche he'd woken up in.

His attention was on his uplink with the ship more than his optical sensors as he did it; he almost missed the prod.

It had fallen behind one of the other crates still on the floor, and he'd managed to overlook it as he was scrambling to pack the rest of the weapons away. He snatched it up now, but there was no time to get it into the crate with the rest, so he tucked it out of sight against his forearm and scurried into the shelter of the alcove.

The dock holding the transport sledge was normally in full view of the cameras monitoring the cargo bay, but the towers of containers stacked around it now shielded him from Blackout's surveillance. He peeked quickly at the security feeds to reassure himself that he couldn't be seen, then withdrew from the ship's systems before Blackout picked up on the fact that he wasn't alone with _Vitalis'_ AI. Out of sight and now out of immediate danger, he was able to relax.

Secure in the privacy of the alcove, Knock Out sat on the edge of the sledge and examined the weapon in his hands. He'd worked with energon prods before—wielded with skill, there was no better tool for convincing the recalcitrant that cooperation would be in their best interests—but he'd never seen one like this. The instrument was heavy, the shaft thick and the two-pronged tip and energon crystal at the business end oversized in comparison to the instruments he'd once handled on a regular basis.

Curious, but not curious enough that he wanted to risk being caught with it; he tucked it out of sight between the sledge and the dock. He would have to remember to replace it later. He was sure he would have another chance to snoop—he _hoped_ he would have another chance to snoop—

He was trying not to count on getting another chance to snoop, but he badly needed it. Rifling through the containers from the base had turned up plenty to interest him, and more than a few things he could potentially take advantage of if relations with his captors deteriorated, but nothing of immediate use. More than weapons or supplies, he'd hoped to uncover information he could use to anticipate what Blackout and Breakdown were going to do with him. Personal effects could tell you a lot about a mech if you knew how to read them, and it was a language that Knock Out considered himself proficient in.

But he hadn't found any personal effects. Most of the crates he'd been able to get into had contained weapons.

He wasn't sure he liked what that told him about the mechs currently holding him captive.

There was nothing further he could do now, though, not with Blackout awake and active on the deck overhead. He'd just about started to wonder what he was going to do to pass the time when a chime sounded softly through the room, a warning from his ship that something wicked his way came. He was on his feet by the time the lift platform had risen towards the deck above, and wasn't in the slightest surprised when it descended bearing the massive form of Blackout.

The platform docked to the floor, but Blackout didn't step off. He waited until Knock Out stepped out into the aisle, and then flicked his fingers in a negligent, curling movement.

Knock Out had to fight the urge to bristle or sneer. What did he look like, some Vehicon drone compelled to respond to pre-programmed gestures? Instead, he leaned against the nearest wall of crates, crossing his arms over his chassis and arching his orbital ridges. _You want me to come, big mech, you'd better use your words,_ he thought, though he at least had sense enough to keep the impertinent quip in his mouth.

Blackout watched him expectantly for a moment and then with a frown a moment longer. When he stepped down off the lift, his optics were narrowed and his fists clenched. He still didn't say a word as he stalked down the aisle, just glared.

Knock Out had just long enough to wonder if he should have played the obedient drone after all before Blackout's massive hand wrapped around his arm and he was being hauled bodily towards the lift.

After the first few stumbling, off-balance steps, Knock Out managed to get his feet back under him and trotted along at the silent tyton's side, his feet hitting the floor two or three times for every one stride of Blackout's. He clamped down even harder on his vocalizer, clearing his mental queue of all the impatient and unhappy questions he wanted to ask. He didn't dare, though; he really didn't care to try the much bigger mech's patience any further than he obviously already had.

He kept his silence, expecting Blackout to fill him in at some point, but by the time the lift had docked on the upper deck and Knock Out had been hustled off, it became apparent that the tyton wasn't going to speak first. Knock Out had no idea where he was being taken or why, and it had been a _very_ long time since he'd been treated like he was of so little accord. Damn it, he deserved a little _respect_, and while he knew he wasn't going to get it out of this surly, irrational mech, at the very least he wanted answers.

He planted his feet and yanked his arm out of Blackout's grip, doing his best to ignore the new set of scuffs that earned his much-abused finish. The tyton seemed to swell as he turned and loomed over Knock Out, annoyance clear on his pale gray face, but Knock Out refused to back down.

"Were you planning on saying something, or were you just going to herd me around like a Vehicon?" he snapped, tossing his head back and meeting the bigger mech's gaze optic to optic.

Blackout's sneer exposed dentals—an unbroken grey plate in his mouth, baseline model. Of course. But Knock Out had better things to notice than the subtle indicators of a total lack of style, like the way the bigger mech hesitated before answering.

"Breakdown's memory banks are glitching," he said finally, and there was no mistaking the way he looked away now. Uncomfortable? Embarrassed? Either way, it was curious.

"Oh?" Knock Out folded his arms again, his own optics narrowing. "So why don't you take care of it? You were their repair-mech, weren't you?"

"No!" Blackout said, his response immediate and defensive—and a surprise.

It had seemed pretty straightforward to Knock Out. Mechs who could maintain themselves competently weren't nearly as valuable as trained doctors and medics, but they could still be useful, and Knock Out had seen enough of Blackout's internals to know that he was more than competent. Why wouldn't he have acted as medic for their team, in absence of a trained one?

But apparently he hadn't—yet another miscalculation on Knock Out's part. He'd really been racking them up lately.

He put his hands up and offered a gently ingratiating smile. "My mistake," he said quietly. He glanced over at the closed door to the maintenance bay. "Is he in there?"

Mouth thinned into an unhappy line, Blackout nodded.

"Then let's have a look, shall we?" Knock Out hurried into the maintenance bay before the other mech could crowd him along. Very deliberately, he put the slab and the inert panzere on top of it between himself and Blackout as the tyton crowded into the room.

The maintenance bay was no medbay—a ship of this size-class, despite being an interstellar cruiser, didn't warrant one—but Knock Out had made some modifications since _Vitalis_ had come into his possession. It wasn't a professional setup by any means, but he'd installed enough salvaged medical equipment to be able to draw out a diagnostic array now, prying into Breakdown's cranial port and attaching the primary cabling with a click. Secondary cables found their homes in ports on the patient's chassis, where they could interface directly with his processor; the last plugged into major sensory relays. Once everything was connected and secured, Knock Out activated the array and made sure to position the screen so Blackout could see the readouts, then turned to look up at the bigger mech.

"So tell me what's wrong," he prompted, knowing better now that to wait for Blackout to supply the information voluntarily.

"He was hallucinating," the bigger mech said, after another curious hesitation.

"Hm." That wasn't very useful; hallucinations were symptomatic of a number of different malfunctions. "I can only presume they weren't novel stimuli, or you wouldn't have told me the problem was this his memory banks. How recent were the memories he was—" The diagnostic array beeped loudly, distracting him from his question before he could finish it. He turned to face the screen and frowned at what he saw there.

"Hello, what's this?" he murmured. "_All_ of his cognitive functions are _blocked_?" He poked at the screen, bringing up the pertinent readouts, and couldn't help a low hiss of surprise and alarm. "No, everything that's not autonomic is blocked! How long has he been like this?"

Behind him, Blackout made a noise that Knock Out could only characterize as uncomfortable. "It's an external override," he said. "He wasn't cooperating; I had to put him under."

"An override," Knock Out repeated flatly. Overrides were tricky business—field techs and emergency medics were provided with universal override codes to help them deal with panicking and irrational patients in the field, but they were never able to do more than incapacitate certain, very specific subsystems. Medics could take out a mech's motor subroutines to keep him from fighting, or deactivate any onboard weaponry so she didn't hurt the people trying to help her, but that was about the extent of it. Taking direct control of another mech's mind was generally frowned upon.

Of course, just about everyone had heard the whispers and mutters about the existence of cognitive overrides. The rumors of them were so widespread that most mechs treated them as fact, Autobots and Decepticons alike. What was really surprising about Blackout's admission wasn't that he was admitting to shutting down Breakdown's mind, but that he was making it so baldly, and the massive flier only surprised him further by continuing.

"All gestalt handlers are furnished with total override codes for their teams." He crossed his arms and met Knock Out's gaze; the uncertainty and hesitation was gone and now there was only challenge. "It's a failsafe measure."

"I see," Knock Out said carefully. It seemed pretty clear that the big flier was expecting censure or disbelief out of him, and the last thing he wanted to do was risk provoking Blackout by making a big deal out of this. "Well, I'm going to have to, ah, have you wake him back up for me if I'm going to do anything for him. His processor's no use to me when it's locked down like this."

Whatever it was that Blackout was expecting out of him, it obviously wasn't cooperation. He paused, regarding Knock Out through narrowed eyes; Knock Out looked back at him evenly, radiating as much professional composure as he could manage. After that moment, the bigger mech merely nodded and reached for the cable currently occupying Breakdown's cranial port, leaving Knock Out no choice but to swat his hand away.

"Let me block him first!" he said. "He was stuck in a memory loop, wasn't he? Who knows how he'll come out of it!"

Blackout pulled his hand back with a grunt, looking away. Schooling his expression back into a mask of professional competency, Knock Out disconnected the scanner's primary line and set about uploading the affective block.

Picking his way through a totally inert mind was usually difficult, but he'd been here before. Knock Out was able to set up the block and withdraw much quicker than the first time he'd mucked around in Breakdown's head, and when he was done he stood back to make room for Blackout. "Have at," he invited, "and I'd recommend standing back once you're done—ah, if there's room, anyway."

The annoyed look Blackout shot him very clearly read 'I don't need you to tell me _that'_, but it only lasted until the tyton stepped up to the slab. Connecting in through the panzere's cranial port, his shutters drew low over his optics; the quiet, contemplative expression of concentration that settled over his features made his otherwise craggy face almost handsome. Not for the first time, Knock Out found his thoughts drifting towards what a _statement_ the bigger mech could be making with his plating, his finish. Oh, if Blackout only tweaked a few things—but Knock Out had more than a suspicion that this utilitarian monster would be hostile to such a suggestion, especially if it came from him.

He banished the idle speculation and returned his attention to his patient just in time for Blackout to disconnect. No sooner had he withdrawn his hand and edged backwards than Breakdown shuddered, his engine kicking up in his chest and those strange, bright optics flickering open. He sat up slowly, cabling dragging at him and his eyes swinging back and forth between Blackout and Knock Out.

"Blackout? What… Drag Strip? That you…?" Breakdown blinked and leaned closer to Knock Out, his expression almost comically befuddled. "What happened t' the yellow? And when did you—?" Big, blunt fingers reached for Knock Out's shoulder, sluggishly enough that he was able to duck in under them and push the panzere firmly back down to the slab.

"Close your eyes," he commanded, putting on his very best authoritative medic voice, "and lie still. I'm not Drag Strip, I'm a doctor, and Blackout tells me you're not feeling well."

"…Uh. Yeah, that's right." Breakdown lay back against the slab, hands clasping together over his chest. "Think there might be somethin' wrong with my spark. But I was gonna… have Dead End look at it…"

"Dead End's not here right now, I'm afraid," Knock Out said briskly, reaching under the slab to reconnect the cranial cabling. "I hope you don't mind me taking a look?"

He'd hoped Breakdown would simply comply, but the bigger grounder shook his head and tried to sit up again. "I want Dead End," he insisted, with the peculiar flat affect characteristic of a mech with an affective block. "I needta— need—"

Knock Out leveled a very significant look at Blackout, who—to his surprise—got the hint and moved to pin Breakdown in place on the slab. "Let the doctor work, Breakdown," he commanded, his voice a rough rumble. "You're overcharged and unwell and he needs to make sure you're not in danger."

Breakdown struggled under Blackout's hold for a moment, but the tyton was bigger and had better leverage, and he wasn't going anywhere. Satisfied, Knock Out returned his attention to his diagnostic array, swiveling the screen around enough that he could monitor both the equipment and his patient at the same time.

"Where's Dead End?" Breakdown asked plaintively, his attention on Blackout. He still twisted under the bigger mech's hands, but the motion was uncoordinated—fretful more than an actual struggle for freedom. "'Swith 'Rider, right?" He scratched at his chest uncertainly, alarm stealing slowly across his face. "Did somethin' happen…?"

Knock Out glanced up just in time to see Blackout poorly control the sorrowful expression on his face, hiding away something that looked uncomfortably close to naked regret behind an emotionless façade. "Yes," he said quietly, but offered nothing more. It was the big tyton's turn to shoot Knock Out a significant look, this one easily enough read as 'get on with it, Doctor'.

He turned back his equipment, fingers dancing across the screen as the results of the preliminary scans started to pop up. The machinery was only confirming what his own experience had already suggested was the problem.

"Breakdown." Knock Out clicked his fingers in front of the panzere's face, interrupting the question the other grounder was trying to ask Blackout and bringing the unfocused optics back to him. "You're badly overcharged. Your memory banks are misfiring—you're not where you think you are, and you're reliving things that have already happened. I'm going to put you into stasis, shut down the rogue recall loop manually, and then let you sleep off the high grade. Understand?"

"Uh. Yeah, I guess," Breakdown said slowly. He didn't look like he actually understood, but that was all right. Knock Out wasn't really looking for comprehension; he just wanted to give the other mech some warning before he shut him down.

He took a moment to boot up the stasis deck and draw it into place beside the medical slab. Where the diagnostic array utilized a plethora of trailing cables, the stasis deck needed only one, and he attached it carefully to one of the primary ports on Breakdown's chassis. Unlike Blackout's cognitive override codes, which had put Breakdown into stasis by literally switching off his conscious mind via his brain, the stasis deck would operate through the other mech's processor and put his body functions to sleep. It was a slower, gentler process—but also one that was medically sound and didn't involve tampering directly with another mech's mind, something that Knock Out tried to avoid.

Activating the stasis deck, Knock Out offered a thin smile to Breakdown as the other mech's systems started to shut down. "Things will make sense again when you wake up," he said, patting the other mech's arm. "Don't worry."

Hollow words, when Breakdown would wake up to the knowledge that his teammates were all dead, but Knock Out preferred that to the awkward charade that they were alive and simply not present for the moment.

As soon as the other grounder was under, Knock Out queued up another round of diagnostics. He was aware of the weight of Blackout's silence and the tyton's eyes fixed on him, but he ignored the other mech in favor of watching the data aggregate on the screen. It seemed pretty clear that Breakdown's memory glitch was just a symptom of his overcharge, but he wanted to double-check before he went mucking around in the other mech's head. He was not nearly as comfortable with the mental side of medicine as he liked to pretend he was—his forte was body work, and had been long before he'd ever downloaded a medical manual. Oh, he'd learned how to do basic troubleshooting and repair, of course, enough to be able to fake competency, but just about the only thing he liked _less_ than processor or brain work was sparkwork.

All things considered, though, this looked to be a fairly straightforward problem to deal with. Overcharging on high grade very commonly caused sensory glitches—that was half the reason mechs drank it recreationally. Sure, energon could be stimulating on its own, but high-grade lacked the stabilizers and additives that stretched out the lifespan of fuel-grade energon. It delivered its energetic payload fast and hard, and when the power influxed into a system that wasn't making demands for it, it had to go somewhere. A moderate high-grade buzz usually resulted in nothing more than increased energy and perceptive sensitivity; overcharge, on the other hand, triggered systems to fire in the absence of real stimuli. Novel sensory hallucinations were common. Mnemonic hallucinations like the one Breakdown had been experiencing were a little more rare, but this wasn't the first time Knock Out had needed to deal with an overcharged mech trapped in a memory loop, and it wouldn't be the last.

He pushed the screen back and hopped up on the slab beside Breakdown, reaching for his wrist and the dataport that would be concealed under the plating there. On the other side of the patient, Blackout drew himself up as tall as the height of the ceiling would allow and purged his vents so vehemently something rattled. Startled, Knock Out yanked his hand back and stared up at the much bigger mech with wide optics.

Blackout loomed over him silently for a long moment, his own eyes virulently red in the shadow of his crest. "Well?" he prompted, in a portentous rumble of a voice.

"Ah…" The request seemed so inane after the show the tyton was putting on that Knock Out wondered briefly if his own systems were on the fritz. But no, it really did seem like the bigger mech was trying to scare out of him information that he'd intended to offer freely.

Primus, what kind of mech did Blackout think he was, to be worth this much aggression?

"Right. He's going to be fine," Knock Out said, deliberately affecting a nonchalant shrug. He refused to acknowledge that Blackout's unsubtle scare tactics were worrying him—despite the ticker running constantly in the corner of his vision, attempting to evaluate the probability that the bigger mech would snap and assault him again. "Nothing's wrong with him that can't be attributed to his overcharge."

He reached for Breakdown's arm again, watching Blackout carefully in case the other mech took offense to this, too. Encouraged by the tyton's lack of reaction, he lifted and turned the heavy limb, exposing the data port with a fingertip.

"Honestly, the memory glitch would probably take care of itself the next time he wakes up, but it'll make things easier on him if I shut it down now," he explained, uncovering a similar interface patch on his arm and coupling their wrists together. His optics flicked as he established the connection, his medic's ident codes getting him through the pertinent layers of the unconscious mech's firewalls. From there, accessing the active memory was a fairly straightforward thing, and Knock Out was able to close it out without complication.

He maintained the connection, monitoring what functions of the other mech's processor he could observe for a few moments further. There was always a chance that his interference had destabilized something—processors were vast and complicated and it was easier to glitch them than fix them, especially for a medic who had little experience and less training.

He wasn't picking up on anything starting to go haywire, though, so he withdrew from the other mech's systems and disconnected their wrists. "There," he said, coaxing the shielding back into place over Breakdown's wrist port. "He should be fine when he wakes up."

Blackout scoffed, but when Knock Out glanced up at him, he was looking away.

"What?" he asked, regretting the sharp tone in his voice as soon as he'd spoken.

"He's not going to be _fine_," the bigger mech answered, his own words just as sharp as Knock Out's had been. "Not that I expect _you_ to understand." He spat it like an epithet.

Knock Out was getting very, _very_ tired of the way the bigger mech was treating him, and in any other situation his annoyance would have flared into hot anger. But in any other situation, he would have a modicum of power to wield, or at the very least choice—he'd been stuck in bad places before, but at least then he'd always been able to take _Vitalis_ and run. Here, he had no such recourse, not when it was his own ship he was trying to escape from and nowhere for him to go but the emptiness of space. He had no power here, no influence, nothing.

It was imperative that he keep his temper in check.

Keeping his temper in check, however, did not necessarily equate to falling to his knees and exposing his spark chamber to his captors. He refused to relinquish his pride. Folding his arms over his chassis, tilting his head and hips just so, he scowled up at the bigger mech.

"You mean," he said slowly, keeping the words as even as he could, "you wouldn't expect me to understand that even though his memory banks won't be glitching anymore, he still won't have the four bondmates he lost, right? Because—and no thanks to you, I might add—I _do_ know."

"If you knew," Blackout asked, "why did you bother waking him up at all?"

"Ah, did I say I _knew_?" Knock Out corrected delicately. He spread his hands, palms up—conciliatory. "I will admit that I, ah, perhaps made… the wrong choice in resuscitating Breakdown after his trauma." And medical shortcomings were _never_ something he never admitted lightly, so he made sure to meet Blackout's skeptical gaze with all the sincerity he could muster. "But at the time, I didn't know any better. If I had…"

He shrugged. He didn't know if he would have done anything differently, and it really didn't matter much either way right now.

Leaning up on the stabilizing tips of his feet, he drew a hand over the geometry of Breakdown's chest, the tips of his claws probing at the latches keeping it closed. "If you want, I could open his chassis and let you extinguish his spark right here. You seem rather convinced that it's the inevitable outcome, so why don't we spare poor Breakdown any further suffering, hm?" He glanced up, watching the other mech's reaction to his bald offer with critical eyes.

Blackout lurched backwards, his back impacting the wall with a clang. "What, you mean execute him?" he snapped, somewhere between incredulous and angry.

"I seem to recall you suggesting that very thing not too long ago," Knock Out said. He straightened up, withdrawing his hand from the other mech's chest with a pat. "But I see you're not too keen on it now." He offered a smile, but it was a strained and crooked one. "That's fine; neither am I."

Turning—although not quite enough to put his back to massive mech—Knock Out hopped down off the slab and set about disconnecting the stasis deck. "What's done is done, Blackout," he said as he fingers worked the controls, keying in the command sequence that would ensure Breakdown a long recharge and a gentle awakening at the end of it. "Breakdown's alive.

"Don't you think our time would be better spent helping him come to terms with that, rather than punishing me for a mistake I made in ignorance?" 

* * *

><p><strong>A note on terminology:<strong> 'Panzere', and 'tyton' are all names for various headcanon model types that I've developed for TFP 'verse. Panzere (Breakdown) is a grounder model, and tyton (Blackout) is a massive flight-capable model. I did my best to include sufficient context clues to indicate who was what in the body of the story.

If you'd like more information on the model types in my system, there's an info post about it up on my DreamWidth account, therizinosaur. (You can find it through either the 'meta' or 'fandom: transformers' tags, both of which are accessible on the right sidebar of my account.

I'm sorry for the delay between the last chapter and this one, and the delay to come between this and the next. I've been quite busy recently preparing convention stock, which eats severely into my writing time. Hopefully after Botcon I'll be able to make time again in my days for writing.

Speaking of, I'M GOING TO BOTCON! And if you're there too, feel free to look for me in the Dealer's Room- I'll be behind the booth with the costume wings and the jewelry and the pillows and the Seeker t-shirts and other awesome handmade TF things.

Mention "Mercenary Medicine" and get a free pin as a thank you for reading!


	11. Chapter 11

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to my beta-readers, and special thanks to Dirge for letting me bounce ideas off her and helping keep my Breakdown in line. _Mercenary Medicine_ wouldn't be the story it is today without you, Dirge.

AND WE'RE BACK! Sorry for the long, long hiatus on this fic, folks. Real life got very much in my way, I'm afraid, but I never intended to give up on MM for good. There may be further delays in getting the rest of the chapters out, but I know what the endgame on this fic is going to be and I fully intend to deliver it to you.

Thank you in particular to everyone who found and read this fic while I wasn't writing it, and especially to everyone who favorited and followed it. Hi, welcome, and hold on to your butts, 'cause "Mercenary Medicine" is rolling once more!

* * *

><p>Space yawned open over him, a tapestry of stars and galaxies spread around the small, finite form of <em>Vitalis<em>. The cathedral of the cosmos was vast and endless, a staggering beauty that was easy for even the most uncultured cyb to appreciate—but today he refused. Today the spangled vault was enough to make even a large Cybertronian feel small, to make the universe of politics and unease inside the ship beneath his feet seem wholly trivial.

Knock Out kept his head down and his optics on his work. He was feeling small enough lately, without being dwarfed by the void.

At least the work wasn't difficult. He'd already tackled the bulk of the repairs during prior EVAs, taking care of the external damages to _Vitalis_ piecemeal. It was the safest way to avoid over-exposure to the void, the easiest way to cut down the statistical risk of encountering debris (and there was always a risk of that, even on the outer edge of the star-system as they currently were). Knock Out didn't take chances on EVAs. Replacing an external sensor array on one spacewalk, remounting a damaged camera on the next, replacing damaged circuitry and warped paneling a few spans at the time—it wasn't the most efficient way to work, but for one cyb at it alone, without an extra pair of hands to help with the labor, it was the best.

Besides, the less time he spent outside his ship's hull on any given spacewalk, the better he felt. He'd gladly trade efficiency for security when it came to threats like voidstroke or dismemberment by debris.

This was his final EVA of many necessary to deal with the damage Blackout had done to his ship. He was down to the last of the surface work, replacing warped panels and popping small dents. "Cosmetics," he'd heard Blackout mutter disdainfully, passing by as Knock Out was stacking replacement paneling in the airlock. It had actually surprised him, to find that Blackout thought him vain and petty enough to put himself through the stress of unnecessary EVAs just to doctor the appearance of his ship in the middle of space. He'd actually given the massive flier credit enough to assume he knew how vital it was, to fuel economy and structural integrity both, to keep the ship's hull in good condition.

Either the big flier was more stubborn or cruel—or both—than Knock Out had figured, or he was significantly _less_ clever. After all, you didn't have to be an aero-engineer to know that you risked a ship with a banged-up hull in atmospheric maneuvers.

And for all that Knock Out was getting tired of Blackout's stubborn cruelty, he'd definitely prefer it to straight stupidity.

Magnetic exoboots attached to his feet holding him securely to the hull of the ship, Knock Out crouched over an egregiously dented panel, pulling the rivets holding it secure and taking care to collect each as it came loose. He attached a handle to the panel once it was free and used that to transfer it over to the sledge clinging to _Vitalis'_ hull. Securing the damaged panel before it could spin loose into the void, he removed the new one using the same magnetic handle and just as much care. Holding it in place with temporary micro-magnaclamps, he knelt again to drive the rivets. Straightforward, mindless work—as mindless as a cyb could afford to be out here, anyway—and it took him only a few minutes to see the replacement finished.

He made sure there was no loose debris and packed away the rivet gun and all the magnaclamps, then anchored himself to the sledge with a short tether cable and activated the full spread of HUD on the protective faceplate sealed to his helm. A digital overlay blossomed across his view of the ship's hull, a real-time schematic of the damages done—a schematic painstakingly assembled from _Vitalis'_ damage reports and the readings he'd taken on his first trip out. The overlay tracked his progress during this EVA, completed points showing up positive blue and everything else painted in orange. Behind him, a succession of blue spots along the path he'd plotted over the hull; in front, nothing but his path back inside, a faint digital track of least resistance.

There. The repairs were finished. If he could have, he would have cycled a sigh of relief—but he couldn't, and anyway, though the repairs were finished, his work wasn't yet done. He released the sledge from the surface of the ship and carefully maneuvered it around in front of him, pointing it towards the airlock. Taking a solid grip on the handles, he leaned forward and started walking. He didn't have far to go—he'd made a point of marching himself out to the farthest point from the airlock that had still needed maintenance and working his way back—but the journey still seemed interminable. The rhythmic catch-and-release of the magnets in the exoboots made him slow and the lack of gravity in the void made him clumsy; the burden of the sledge meant he had to watch every step, lest he impart too much momentum and lose control of it. The sledge, which was the size of a full workbench and contained not only tools and supplies but all the restraints and systems necessary to operate in zero-grav, had more than enough mass to do him damage if it got away from him, especially since it was still tethered to the belt fixed around his waist.

Getting it to the open airlock was the easy part; getting it inside without damaging anything was the trick. And he was going to have to do it under surveillance, because of course Blackout's little spy was waiting for him, clinging to the inside jamb of the lock.

He wasn't going to let the hulking flier know that the Deployer's presence bothered him, though. He put his head down and proceeded with the maneuver as if the bug weren't there; even if he'd had the energy to spare, getting the mobile workbench inside required all of his concentration. Pushing and pulling just so to control the sledge's inertial velocity, pitting his actuators and servos and the contacts of the exoboots against the mass of the thing—it was a familiar ballet but that made it no less exhausting. Knock Out was not so experienced in zero-grav maneuvers as to take his ability to execute them for granted.

He got the sledge docked against the wall, locked into its clamps, and clumped wearily over to the control pad to cycle the outer airlock door closed. The atmospheric seals engaged and the gravity came back on, every joint and strut creaking as they had to take his weight again. Knock Out twisted and turned, resettling his plating against the protoform beneath and idly testing the fatigue in his joints as air hissed steadily into the chamber. A list of potential strains scrolled on his HUD—his internal HUD, not the display on the faceplate still sealed to his helm—but he ignored them. Strains didn't worry him, and if he'd blown or fused or seriously disjointed something out there, he'd already know about it.

EVAs were inevitably rough on a cyb, even ones who'd actually received training in zero-grav ship maintenance and repair. Bodies and systems engineered to work against the pull of gravity functioned differently in the void, and while it was easy enough to compensate, it wasn't always _comfortable_. That was one of the reasons he avoided long-term EVAs—bad enough to be stuck out there without backup, but it wasn't like he had anyone he could count on to put him back together if he seriously damaged himself. He'd been careful, extra careful in planning these EVAs, knowing how many he'd have to make to repair Blackout's careless damages, knowing how much support and sympathy he could expect from his current shipmates if something went wrong…

But it hadn't. He was finished, and _Vitalis_ cleared for safe and efficient atmospheric maneuvering once more. He couldn't help a self-satisfied grin behind the faceplate.

He detached the exoboots and the tether belt while the airlock chamber continued to pressurize, stowing at all away in a cabinet and then just sitting on the bench he'd folded out from the wall. As soon as the atmospheric indicator went to blue he was unsealing the faceplate, air rushing in with a hiss. The faceplate guaranteed enough pressure to protect the functioning of his optics, just as delicate as any other Cybertronians, and to allow him to talk, but not much more—certainly not the full atmosphere that life support kept the ship at. He unsealed the rest of his vents and cycled deeply, purging the last of the tension of the long series of repairs with the sigh.

Even the most stale ship air made a fine draught after the frigid lack and the necessity of sealed vents in the void. The irony would never be lost on Knock Out, physician that he was, that a Cybertronian could overheat to termination because of it, even in the cold depths of space.

Chittering softly, the Deployer shifted its grip on the doorjamb, the blank lenses that passed for its eyes fixed unblinkingly on him. He ignored it for a few more minutes, sitting relaxed against the wall of the airlock chamber, just resting. It didn't give him very long, starting soon enough to creep closer to him along the arch of the inner lock, moving with effortless precision for a bug hanging upside-down from a doorway. While Knock Out could ignore its vocalizations, the rhythmic rustle and clang of its feet as it climbed steadily towards him was harder to set aside.

"All right, all right, I'm up," he said, before it could get close enough to crowd him. He levered himself up off the seat with a groan of stressed servomotors and made a point of folding it back into place against the wall before turning to face the bug. He flicked his fingers at it, the gesture half dismissive and half beckoning. "Down, scraplet," he said, but only laconically, not expecting a response.

He definitely wasn't expecting obedience. The Deployer obliged him, springing down from the jamb and clearing the inner airlock door to cycle open. Knock Out eyed it uncertainly for a moment as it marched out and into the access corridor beyond, then shrugged and followed it. It led the way down the short hall way, still chattering intermittently to itself. It sounded self-satisfied; Knock Out wondered if he was imagining it.

A flash in his HUD warned him before he stepped through the arch and into the common room, and so he wasn't surprised to find Blackout's big spy waiting for him. Breakdown was sprawled in one of the seats, staring blankly at a plain spot on the wall. He looked… empty, or like he was waiting—how he often looked, when there wasn't something he was responding to.

He picked himself up a little when he noticed Knock Out. "Hey."

Knock Out ignored him, putting his head down and cutting across the common room towards his current cabin. Breakdown only engaged him at Blackout's behest, and Knock Out wasn't exactly in the mood to deal with it right now.

"Hey," Breakdown said again, getting to his feet with a creak of hydraulics and servos to match the distress of Knock Out's own. At least he had a reason for his physical fatigue; in Breakdown it was an effect of indifferent maintenance and insufficient exercise. It was enough to make the buffbot in Knock Out wince, even though it had been a long time since he'd been personally responsible for another cyb's maintenance.

He reached the entrance to his cabin and slapped the control pad, watching with anxious dismay as the door—repaired now from the damage Breakdown had done it in his destructive little fit, but it was only a makeshift job—ground sluggishly towards full aperture. He could feel the bigger grounder looming up behind him before the door was open wide enough to duck through.

Out of time. Summoning his best, most professional expression, Knock Out turned. "Yes, Breakdown?"

"Blackout wants to see you." He jerked his head towards the open doorway and the access corridor at the back end of the common room. "In the bridge."

Of course he did. Knock Out didn't let himself react beyond a curt nod. "All right. You can tell him I'll be there as soon as—"

Breakdown was shaking his head. "He said now. Soon as you came in."

Of _course_ he did. "All right," Knock Out said again, shoulders slumping. Defeated. He turned about sharply on one heel and ducked around Breakdown, careful not to make accidental contact with the bigger mech. He struck off across the room—at a very different angle than the one that would deliver him to the bridge access. Blackout could demand an audience of him, and Knock Out didn't dare refuse, but he wasn't going to go scampering immediately off to the bridge like an errant newspark.

Given a few cycles to rest and refuel and Knock Out might have been able to handle Blackout's peremptory officiousness with magnanimity. Fresh off a spacewalk and as drained as he was feeling? The only reason he wasn't ignoring Breakdown entirely and locking himself in his cabin was because he didn't want to risk his door. He'd managed to repair it once, but even that was only barely functional. He didn't much relish the thought of having it ripped straight out of the wall for the obviously inexcusable crime of provoking Blackout.

He cut across to the energon dispensary, palming his way inside and taking up a hand-tube from the rack of empty containers. He keyed in his ident manually—mostly for show, he could have had _Vitalis_ log him with just a thought—and then filled it from the dispenser beside the main reservoir. Capping off the tube with a clean sipper, he turned—and stopped, taking in the sight of Breakdown filling up the doorway. The other cyb was watching him, no expression on his face, but there was something in the brightness of his optics and the subtle set of his shoulders and plating that gave Knock Out pause.

His offended pride wanted him to treat both of his unwelcome companions the same way they'd been treating him so far, to just put his head down and force his way past Breakdown without a word. He wanted to be just as much as slagger as he was being slagged off. But at spark, Knock Out was pragmatic, and it was that pragmatism that warned him now that he was already in for a long journey, and antagonizing his captors unnecessarily would make it seem all the longer. His uncertain truce with Blackout was just one step towards civil relations, and had proven over the last few cycles to be a very small step indeed.

Blackout was a rock Knock Out was just going to have to figure out how to navigate around, and carefully. Of the two, it was Breakdown, this big, blank mech in front of him, non-reactive and slow and distant after their first violent spasms of meeting—it was Breakdown who Knock Out thought he might have a chance of reaching.

And it was Breakdown that, ostensibly, he was supposed to be helping. It was the basis of his little ceasefire with Blackout, the fulcrum on which he'd levered himself up out of the cargo hold. Blackout hadn't seemed inclined yet to follow up on their decision to work together to help Breakdown, but Knock Out didn't have to follow his lead on this. Which of them was the trained physician, after all?

He gestured with his hand-tube at the other mech. "Hungry?"

Breakdown looked at him, then slowly moved his optics to the tube, then moved them back to him again. There was definitely something in his eyes, a vital warmth deep within the big strange optics, but he still sounded far-away as he rolled his shoulders in a shrug and said, "Sure." His voice was flat, affectless, but when Knock Out handed him an empty container from the rack, he moved obediently over to the dispenser and filled it. Knock Out's critical eye noted the heavy way he handled the energon tap, and how he almost fumbled the sipper top before he got it sealed to the tube, but he didn't say anything about it. It was curious, sure, but Knock Out was just a little too tired to be thinking diagnostically. He'd puzzle over the clumsiness later.

"Do you know what Blackout wants me for?" Knock Out asked as they filed out of the little dispensary together. The absent flier's Deployer chirped at the mention of its host's name, hopping down from the perch it had assumed while they'd been busy inside and weaving a complex pattern under their feet.

Seeking information just after the offer of fuel was a blatant move, Knock Out knew, but he was willing to take the chance. Stubborn Blackout would deny him on principle, but he didn't know enough about disinterested Breakdown to be able to guess how he'd react. But the bigger mech just stared silently at him for a moment before shrugging another of those strutless shrugs. Knock Out considered pressing the issue, but he didn't get a chance; the little drone had flung itself into Breakdown's feet, its vocalizations getting shriller. Turning away from him, Breakdown knelt carefully over the agitated Deployer, squeezing some of the energon from the tube onto his fingers and offering it to the bug.

Well. That was that. It had been worth a try, at least.

Putting the sipper of his own tube to his mouth, Knock Out squared his shoulders and headed for the bridge accessway. The door, which should have opened automatically to admit him, didn't, and he had to stop short before he walked straight into it. He scowled at the little orange locklight on the doorpad. He was fairly sure he could get _Vitalis_ to override that lock, but it sat heavily on his shoulders that he couldn't yet afford not to play Blackout's game by Blackout's rules. So he pressed the chime and occupied himself with his fuel while he waited to be buzzed in, allowing himself those moments to savor the rush of energy to his stressed systems.

Finally the door cycled open, and Knock Out stepped through. It was the first time he'd been allowed on the bridge since Blackout had taken over the ship, and the sight of the massive flier straining the pilot's cradle to capacity struck him as grotesque. With an effort, Knock Out composed himself, kept himself from reacting to what felt viscerally like a violation.

"You wanted to see me?" He was proud of how even and neutral his voice sounded.

"Sir," Blackout said pointedly, falling expectantly silent after. He had a starmap open on the main screen and his optics were fixed on it.

Not three sentences into the conversation and Knock Out was already feeling his determination to play along being strained. "Come again?" he managed, but only after another moment to recompose himself.

"'You asked to see me, _sir_,'" Blackout said. He shifted in the cradle, turning enough to fix Knock Out with a baleful sidelong stare. "Or have you forgotten that I am your superior officer?"

Knock Out stared back, floored by the pedantic correction and the unmitigated gall of the assertion. Blackout had claimed as much before, when they were evacuating the base, but Knock Out hadn't thought he meant it _seriously_.

Then again, might made right among their kind, didn't? Especially out here on the fringes, where Decepticon High Command was a distant bureaucratic nuisance and questions of hierarchy were solved with posturing and contests of strength more often than appeals to any higher authority. Knock Out was certainly not assigned to any official command of Blackout's—would have resisted as much with all his spark, in fact—but that didn't mean he could dare disrespect the monster now. Not here, not trapped onship like this in the middle of literally nowhere.

Blackout's games, Blackout's rules. He had to play along. He purged his vents in a slow hiss and stood up a little straighter, letting his tube of energon dangle from one hand and managing a respectable salute with the other.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" he parroted dutifully. He was so deadpan as he said it that he sounded sarcastic, at least to his own audials, so it came as a surprise when Blackout accepted it with a nod.

"I have orders for you," the big flier rumbled, "presuming you've finished your—" A pause. "—work."

That was some unexpected diplomacy from a mech who'd been disparaging his efforts only a few cycles ago. Knock Out nodded shortly. "Go on… sir."

A movement of Blackout's hand against one of the control yokes blanked the starmap on the main screen and brought up a document that Knock Out recognized quickly enough as the inventory he kept of his ship's supplies. "I want a full record of everything we're carrying onboard," Blackout said. "_Everything_, down to the diameter of every last spare bolt. Start with what we took out of the base; I've got no records of that."

"Everything?" Knock Out repeated, an incredulous hitch in his voice. Inventorying was an onerous task, a necessary evil that he undertook only when he had more free time than he knew what to do with and literally nothing else to do with it. Going through his own personal supplies was time-consuming enough, but going through—

Everything Blackout and Breakdown had brought on board…

Openly and with permission. No, with _orders_. And Blackout himself had just admitted that he couldn't prove what it was he'd brought with him in those boxes crowding the cargo hold.

It was a struggle to keep a predatory grin from blooming across his face, but Knock Out had plenty of experience in self-control and managed to keep his expression neutral. "Yessir. Anything else?"

Blackout had already returned the main screen to the starmap he'd been studying when he'd admitted Knock Out. "That will be all," he said. "You're dismissed."

Despite his exhaustion, there was a certain buoyancy in Knock Out's step, a swagger to his stride as he took himself out of the bridge and back down the accessway. He still needed rest, and badly, but his thoughts were already ranging ahead to the task he'd been given—and how best he could turn Blackout's exploitation of his labor to his own advantage.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Welcome to new readers, welcome back to old readers, and thank you to all of you! Readers, reviewers, favoriters, followers, everyone, thank you for being here, and I hope to give you another chapter soon!


	12. Chapter 12

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to my beta-readers, and special thanks to Dirge for letting me bounce ideas off her and helping keep my Breakdown in line. _Mercenary Medicine_ wouldn't be the story it is today without you, Dirge.

Please see the end of the chapter for some important notes!

* * *

><p>The difference that even a few days' worth of work had made in the state of the cargo bay was astonishing. Knock Out knew that Blackout's evacuation of their outpost had been rushed, but he hadn't realized quite the full extent of it until he'd started his inventory project. Sure, the one container he'd been able to get into while he'd still been locked down here had been messy, but he'd assumed that was an exception.<p>

Not so. While plenty of the containers brought on at the outpost had obviously been active storage and simply moved from the base to the ship, just as many had been packed with haste and without care. He was saving so much room repacking more efficiently after he was done cataloguing everything into his inventory that he was starting to think he might get some of the floorspace in his cargo hold back _before_ they offloaded everything at—wherever it was that Blackout was taking them.

That was a thought that had begun to plague him. He suspected Blackout had a final destination in mind for them and he knew that the big flier was piloting them out-system and into the open space they needed to jump. What he didn't know was what their final destination was. Another fringe base? A trading post? Blackout had been working with _Vitalis'_ nav-computer and had been sending transmissions on the sub-space comm, but he'd made a point of encrypting his work firmly. Knock Out had toyed with the thought of asking _Vitalis_ to open it to him anyway, but had ultimately decided against it; he didn't want to test the AI's loyalty _or_ Blackout's patience with such a stunt. He was going to have to be a good little sparkling and wait to be told.

At least the inventory was keeping him too preoccupied to dwell on it. Between the sheer number of crates he was going to have to go through and the care he had to take in unpacking, sorting, and then repacking the disorganized ones, he sometimes didn't get through more than four or five of them in a work period. It was the worst combination of tedious and exacting, requiring much of his attention and very little thought.

If he'd been learning about his captors while he did it, it would have been worth it, but Knock Out had been dismayed to realize that his opportunity to snoop wasn't going to be as enlightening as he'd hoped. The first day, Blackout had made a point of removing all his personal cargo to the captain's cabin and beyond Knock Out's reach—the only exception to his open invitation to go through _everything_, apparently. And if Breakdown had personal goods down here, Knock Out hadn't yet found the crate.

Even his ability to sneak away the best of the cargo for himself was severely compromised by the almost-constant surveillance of Blackout's Deployer. The bug shadowed him constantly; his only reprieve from its unblinking optics was how easily it could be distracted by the occasional skittering emergence of vermin (or a loosed handful of ball bearings). It would go chasing off into the hold after its prey, and Knock Out would be able to operate freely for a few minutes. It was never gone very long, but then again, he rarely needed more than a moment or two to secret something away in a storage pocket or discreetly remove it to one of his own storage lockers.

There were even some perks to the thing's presence. The drone's surveillance meant that Blackout was no longer actively watching him on _Vitalis'_ cameras—and also that those cameras weren't actively recording him, either. As long as he could set something rolling for the drone to chase after, he could pocket prizes without fear of reprisal.

He didn't dare risk tricking the Deployer too often, though. There was no way Knock Out could be sure how closely Blackout was watching it watch _him_, so he was forced to a certain amount of circumspection. He kept his scavenging—or as he preferred to think of it, his proactive pursuit of adequate payment for the services he had been and would continue to render—to only the most valuable and necessary items he happened across. He secreted away a rare tool here, snagged a specialized scanner there, claimed the occasional packet or box of the pureforged biomechanical replacement parts that were becoming so very hard to come by, all without marking their original source on the inventory. He was gambling against Blackout's assertion that he didn't know what he'd brought on from the outpost, but Knock Out felt fairly safe in his pilfering; these were things that had incredible value to him, but that no one but a medic should be able to recognize their true worth.

He also allowed himself one indulgence, found in an entire crate full of treasure labeled with the name Drag Strip: an unopened packet of ultraplush microfiber polishing cloths and two— _two!_— sealed jars of Clearshine Nanoreactive Polymer Waxing Compound. A luxury even back before the war, Clearshine Polymer was all but impossible to find anymore. Sealed, viable jars commanded exorbitant prices on the cosmetics market—well, what remained of it, anyway. The Clearshine was such a prize that, once he had it secured where Blackout would _never_ find it, he was able to dutifully log the rest of the polishes, waxes, and buffing compounds into the inventory as property of the outpost without even a twinge of longing.

After the first few days of the repetitive work, he even found himself falling into something of a routine. The inventorying required close attention, especially when he was unloading crates haphazardly packed and full of weaponry and ammo, but it was mindless work despite that. Unpack, catalogue, repack—it was almost pleasant to let the rhythm of it shape his days, especially if he imagined he was doing it for himself and not at the behest of a ship-hijacking interloper.

Really, the accident seemed, in retrospect, inevitable.

It was another box of weapons; there was a lot of them on-ship, more than even a well-stocked armory at an outpost of that size could account for. Knock Out knew enough to be cautious while he was handling them, of course, but even the attention of the most cautious cyb could lapse. That most cautious cyb's attention was especially prone to lapsing after having had dealt with several crates full of minutiae, long cycles spent mechanically removing and sorting and recording nothing more interesting than basic maintenance supplies. Certainly that most cautious cyb could be tired and distracted by thoughts of recharge and could be, perhaps, a little overcareless as ey started laying weapons out on eir workmat.

The hum of a priming weapon registered in his processor before his brain, alarm subroutines slamming to active life and throwing his body into motion before he had even realized what was happening. The charge sizzled past his foot as he threw himself to one side. Accompanied by the skittering of the bug as it abandoned its post, he scuffed his length across the floor as he got out of the way. He fetched up against his stack of re-organized crates and huddled there with his arms over his head.

His whole body tensed for danger, he waited—for the ozone tang of another discharge, the concussion of an explosion, the crackle of flames, the shrieking whistle of decompression—

But he didn't detect anything further out of the ordinary. Cautiously, Knock Out uncurled, sitting up against the bulk of the crates. "_Vitalis?_" he queried; the ship obligingly filled his HUD with a schematic overlay of hold around him. Everything was coming up blue, surprisingly blue.

"What happened?" he said, but this question _Vitalis_ did not have an answer for. All it could tell him was that it had detected the discharge of an energy weapon of moderate ordnance in the cargo hold.

Once he climbed to his feet and ventured a little closer to the site of the shot, though, it was not hard to piece together what had happened. There was a long, dark gouge in the floor of the hold that had not been there a moment ago, reeking of cooked surfactants and warped metal. The blistered runnel served as mute testimony to the way the discharge had burned itself out along the floor. The mark was ugly even among the myriad scars of shifted cargo and deep enough to pose a tripping hazard, but Knock Out far preferred a minor inconvenience to, say, an explosion or a hull breach.

The mark also led straight as a pointer back to the culprit weapon, an…energon prod? Knock Out had expected, of course, some kind of handheld blaster—but then again, he wouldn't have accidentally triggered a blaster, no matter how sloppy fatigue had made him. Energon prods, on the other hand, were _not_ supposed to have triggers.

This one did.

Gingerly he picked it up off the mat, placing his fingers carefully so as to avoid a second shot. All of the usual power toggles were present on the control grip, but there was no mistaking the mechanism built into the handle next to the usual panel.

There was also no mistaking the unusual heft of the thing. It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to wield an energon prod, but he remembered the equipment well enough to know that this prod was _heavy_. Possibly to accommodate the kind of power core and focusing mechanisms you needed to make energon fire in a concerted bolt, instead of just sublimating into pure electricity?

A very small and impulsive part of him wanted to trigger it again, to see what it did when it wasn't discharging its bolt against the heavily reinforced floor of a cargo hold. A larger but still very impulsive part wanted to crack open the casing and look at the workings inside. The largest part still decided that he needed to make this interesting little implement disappear, and quickly, so he could indulge the other two parts later.

Holding the prod with both hands well away from the control grip, he looked around for the bug. He hadn't noticed it emerge, but that didn't mean it wasn't watching him from some sheltered cranny. There was no sign of the Deployer, not even the malevolent glint of spying optics—but he did see the indicator light on the control pad beside the lift go to orange as he turned.

When it descended from the ceiling, Breakdown was standing on it.

"Blackout wants to know what just happened," he said, releasing the handrail and stepping off the lift—but not until it had locked in place against the floor. Though his steps were even and careful as he started forward, as soon as he swept his optics over Knock Out and the spread of materiel on the floor, he stumbled noticeably and stopped.

"That's—that's 'Rider's stuff," he said. When he moved again, he was staggering, his steps become urgent and uncontrolled. Knock Out retreated as he approached, unconsciously shifting his grip on the prod to raise the business end between himself and the oncoming mech, but Breakdown stopped again at the edge of the workmat.

Ponderously, the big grounder sunk to one knee beside it, reaching down to brush the closest piece of weaponry with a fingertip. "This is that, uh, beam disperser thing he was working on," he said. Shifting a little, he touched another of the items on the mat, then another. "And this is a charge for his stupid shrapnel cannon, and this is—"

He stopped and raised his head, and his yellow optics when they met Knock Out's were gleaming bright. Knock Out couldn't remember seeing so much luminosity in them before now. "What're you doing with Wildrider's stuff?" Breakdown asked.

There was enough of a dangerous rumble in the other mech's voice it took an effort on Knock Out's part to drop the tip of the prod towards the floor. He purged his vents and managed a smile, and sounded far more casual than he felt when he spoke. "I'm cataloguing it. Blackout's orders."

"…Huh." Head drooping over his chest, Breakdown processed that for a moment. "D'you even know what this stuff is, though?" he asked finally.

Knock Out was intensely relieved to hear that distant promise of hostility gone as quick as it had come from Breakdown's voice. The invocation of Blackout seemed to have defused the tension, just as Knock Out had hoped. Opting for continued candor, he said, "No. I've been taking my best guesses."

"Huh," Breakdown said again. He shifted his weight, attempting to sit back on his heels, but didn't quite manage to get the balance of it right. He toppled back, landing with a grunt on his aftside. The fall didn't seem to bother him, though; he just blinked up at Knock Out and returned to his initial question. "So what happened, anyway?"

Experience had taught Knock Out that even a mech sprawled on his rear bumper could still potentially pose a threat. Breakdown's arms were long enough that his reach shouldn't be underestimated, and Knock Out was leery of getting close. More recent observation, however, belied the danger; Knock Out had seen those long arms reaching to pick up something and missing it entirely. Breakdown's persistent clumsiness and sluggishness had not escaped Knock Out's notice, and that was what gave him enough confidence to approach the bigger mech. He offered him the prod.

"I wasn't expecting this to have a trigger," he said, his voice more naturally casual now. "I set it off by accident."

Breakdown reached up and took the end of the prod, but before Knock Out could relinquish it to him, he used it to leverage himself up to his feet again. The unexpected yank would have sent Knock Out sprawling again—if it weren't for the big arm that caught him before he fell. Breakdown tipped him back onto his feet and then released him, leaving Knock Out with the prod still in his hands.

Before he had even fully parsed what had just happened, Breakdown was already backing off. "That's his augmented long-range offensive prod," Breakdown said, eying the shaft for just a moment before turning his face away. "Wildrider... wasn't ever any good at names. I woulda called it the Assaultin' Battery."

It wasn't until Knock Out had already laughed that he realized that it might not have been meant as a joke. Then he saw the sidelong smile on Breakdown's face, and felt it safe enough to laugh again.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>First off, HAPPY HALLOWEEN, Merc Med fans! I didn't expect this chapter to be done so soon, but I pushed to finish it up as a special treat for you all! Unfortunately, in return, I'm going to have to play a couple of little tricks on you.

First up, you might be wondering what's up with all the energon prods. Didn't Knock Out find and hide away another oversized prod in chapter 10? Well... yes, yes he did, and he's getting his hands on a prod like this for a reason, but I was never happy with the way that ended up happening in ch 10. So Knock Out finding this prod "again" is a **retcon**, I am afraid, and I hope you can bear with me on this. The one he found in chapter 10? **Pretend that didn't happen.**

In time I plan to go through and rewrite a bunch of the scenes in chapter 9 and 10 to be a lot stronger and better paced. When that happens, you'll be the first to know! But it's not going to happen any time soon. Why?

Well that leads me into trick number 2: there's not going to be another new chapter Merc Med probably until December. I'm sure you can guess why: it's NaNoWriMo season. (That's why I wanted to get this chapter up today, since NaNo kicks off, of couse, November 1st.) But it's not all bad! My NaNo project this year _is_ Mercenary Medicine. I'm determined to get it finished up for you guys and I'm using NaNo as a way to get a lot of raw words poured into this story in a short period of time. Even if I don't make the full 50,000, I should be able to get Merc Med very close to done.

So those are my two little tricks. Hopefully they're not too bad! Have a happy Halloween, try not to get _too_ sick on candy, and I'll see you again on the other side of November!


	13. Chapter 13

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to my beta-readers, and special thanks to Dirge for letting me bounce ideas off her and helping keep my Breakdown in line. _Mercenary Medicine_ wouldn't be the story it is today without you, Dirge.

* * *

><p>When Knock Out ducked through the sluggish panels of the door to his current quarters after his period of recharge, he found Breakdown already waiting in the common room. That alone wasn't unusual; Breakdown kept erratic hours. This wasn't the first time Knock Out had emerged bright and early to get started on his day—a terrible habit that he intended to relinquish as soon as he didn't have Blackout looming over him and judging him for his work ethic—and found Breakdown already up. No, the difference today was in the fact that Breakdown was waiting <em>for him<em>. He looked up as soon as Knock Out emerged, their optics meeting.

Breakdown's eyes still had that same luminosity in them today as Knock Out had noticed last night.

"You still goin' through 'Rider's stuff?" the bigger mech asked, pushing off from where he'd been slouched against the wall.

"As a matter of fact, I am."

Breakdown didn't continue immediately, but Knock Out waited quietly. Sometimes you could lead a patient, and sometimes you had to coax out them out, but sometimes you had to give them their head and allow them to come to you on their own terms. Knock Out considered himself a good judge of when to wait and when to push.

After a long moment, the other mech found his voice again. "Need some help?"

"Please," Knock Out said, nodding to the bigger mech and gesturing that Breakdown should precede him to the lift.

He didn't _need_ the help, not really. How could he but take into account how slow Breakdown was, how regularly clumsy? It wasn't that he considered himself a perfectionist or a control freak—not in any matters other than his finish, anyway—but he was used to doing things for himself. He already had a system in place for this and having to deal with someone else getting in the way was going to be a trial, of that he was sure.

But he was just as sure that the detrimental effect on his inventory would be worth it. After all, Blackout wasn't showing any signs of softening towards him, and the Deployer was, well, a Deployer. Even if Knock Out had a way to access the symbiotic link that allowed the drone and its host to communicate, what would it be able to tell him about his captors? The things weren't actually sapient, no matter how their hosts inevitably tried to insist otherwise.

Breakdown, though, might just be the ticket he needed to get through this ordeal intact. All he had to do was draw the sullen grounder out of his shell, coax that affable Breakdown that he'd met last night into thinking well of him, and he'd finally have some sway, some input that Blackout might actually respect. There was a lot that Knock Out could do with that kind of leverage. Certainly it would be worth the cost of inviting Breakdown to muddle around in his inventory operation.

Following the other mech onto the lift, Knock Out offered Breakdown a smile, careful to keep it friendly without letting his satisfaction seep through. He was immensely gratified to see that smile returned; it meant he was already well on the way to securing that goodwill.

* * *

><p>"Hey, uh, doc?"<p>

In the middle of transcribing Breakdown's latest description of yet another one of Wildrider's prototypes, Knock Out held up one finger—_wait, please_—and finished up his typing with a rapid flurry of his fingertips. He had to admit, Breakdown's assistance with this was proving more valuable than he'd thought. The inventory wasn't progressing any _faster_, but the mech's familiarity with the work of his Stunticon teammate meant that the information Knock Out was entering was much, much more complete. They'd gone through all of the crates left from Wildrider's workshop in the course of a few days, and we were working now on updating the information on the prototypes Knock Out had guessed at on his own.

After saving the entry, he lowered the datapad to his lap and looked up at Breakdown. The other mech was still fiddling with the device in question, an unimpressive lump of metal and wiring that was—apparently—supposed to be some sort of sonic grenade. His head was bowed over it, the big silver pauldrons over his shoulders bristling defensively, but there had been nothing but diffidence in his voice when he spoke.

"Yes, Breakdown?" Knock Out said, watching steadily as Breakdown peeked up at him, caught him looking, and dropped his gaze again. Hurriedly, the other mech set down the grenade and reached for the next prototype, but once he had it in his hands he went right back to fiddling with it in his lap.

"What's gonna happen to all this stuff?" he finally asked. "Where's it going?"

"That I don't know, I'm afraid," Knock Out said. "Our, ah, commander hasn't seen fit to share our final destination with me, and I take it he hasn't told you yet either?"

"Nah," Breakdown said, and then softer, "He doesn't tell me anything."

Now that was interesting. Knock Out made a point of filing that little revelation away for later contemplation, then said, "I'm sure he intends to offload it once we arrive. What happens to it after that…" He shrugged, but Breakdown still wasn't looking up and failed to react to the gesture. "You'll just have to ask."

The other grounder grunted softly, the sound impossible to interpret.

Knock Out waited a long, silent moment for Breakdown to either elaborate or start talking about the item in his hands, then prompted him with a gentle, "Why?"

"Jus' wondering," Breakdown muttered, quick and defensive. He went silent again, long enough this time that Knock Out assumed that was all he was going to get out of the other mech. Well, no one could say that he hadn't tried. He picked up the datapad, moving to the next line of the document he was working on, but as soon as he opened his mouth to suggest that they continue, Breakdown blurted out, "Can I have some of it?"

That gave Knock Out pause. He'd spent so long thinking of this cargo as Blackout-and-Breakdown's, belonging equally and wholly to both of them, that it was a shock to realize that Breakdown didn't see it that way. He didn't trust himself to respond immediately, staring instead at Breakdown until the other mech raised his head and their optics met.

The expression on his face was almost painfully earnest.

"Of course you can, Breakdown," Knock Out said impulsively. He set the datapad aside and got to his feet. "Stay here."

Leaving Breakdown where he was seated at the edge of the workmat, Knock Out hurried off to where he was currently storing empty cargo containers. He grabbed one off the top of the stack and wrestled with it for a moment, opening it up from the flat, space-saving storage mode to its functional configuration. The minor effort gave him a moment to mentally regroup. Knock Out considered himself an observant, clever mech; realizing that he'd so fundamentally misconstrued at least one aspect of the situation here was startling, to say the least.

He clutched the crate close for a moment, venting rhythmically as he tried to collect himself. Only when he was sure he had himself under control did he return to the workmat, offering the container across to the other mech. "Here."

"Thanks," Breakdown said, smiling faintly at him. "Can I take—uh…" He trailed off, the smile gone; he looked as unsure as a newspark, fresh out of the Well.

"As far as I'm concerned," Knock Out said gently, "anything that once belonged to your, ah, teammates is now yours. Take what you want."

Telling Breakdown to do as much was risky, when the cargo was Knock Out's only to document and not to distribute. Blackout would very likely disapprove of him taking liberties like this—he could already hear the flier's pompous, pedantic voice claiming that Iall materiel belonged to the Decepticon cause/I or something equally fatuous. But Blackout had several storage lockers full of his own things secured in the captain's cabin, and Breakdown had _nothing_.

Encouraging the mech to take a few mementoes of his dead bondmates was hardly going to diminish the collective might of the Empire. Besides, how different was it from skimming a cargo shipment for choice items, or pilfering a few things from communal stores for personal use? Everyone did it, from the officers down to the anonymous laborers, as long as they were clever enough to get away with it.

Surely Blackout wouldn't _actually_ object. Surely!

—It wasn't lost on Knock Out that he was attempting to justify this risk to himself. Blackout was volatile, disinclined to listen to reason, and adhered stringently to protocol; he wasn't the type of cyb to be swayed by 'but everyone does it' if he decided to object to Knock Out's presumption. Knock Out was running this risk for no other reason than for Breakdown's sake, and he wasn't entirely comfortable with that. Breakdown was still the enemy, after all. Complicit in the theft of Knock Out's ship, accessory to Blackout's violation of Knock Out's security and privacy…

Wasn't he?

This enemy, this mech he was risking Blackout's displeasure for was…staring at him while Knock Out sat there mentally dissecting his motivations for attempting to justify a risk he normally would have found untenable.

"Just… just let me know what you take, so I can strike it from our general inventory, hm?" he said, hoping the smile and the professional cadence of his tone would cover his discomfiture.

"…Uh. Sure," Breakdown said. He sounded skeptical, but if he was, he didn't pursue it, and for that Knock Out was grateful.

"And if there's anything in particular you're looking for," Knock Out continued, "I've been through quite a few of these containers already. I might be able to help you find it." Where were these words coming from? Why couldn't he mute his vocalizer? It was one thing to endear himself to Breakdown to get the big bolt-cruncher on his side; this was something else entirely.

"Sure," Breakdown said again, nodding. He looked up and met Knock Out's optics, and smiled. The expression had a way of reconfiguring his whole face, lighting it up. "Thanks."

Knock Out couldn't help but smile back. Maybe this was one of those risks worth taking.

* * *

><p>Every day they made progress, moving on when they were finished with the contents of Wildrider's workshop. Breakdown proved as slow as Knock Out had expected, but not, as he had feared, clumsy as well. Knock Out had seen enough of him thumping about to have assumed the worst, but as long as the big grounder didn't try to rush, there were no accidents.<p>

It helped that Breakdown took instruction very well, accepting even Knock Out's sharpest corrections with all the equanimity of the most phlegmatic Vehicon laborer. His work was thorough and methodical—as long as Knock Out told him what he needed to know to _be_ thorough and methodical. He even asked questions when he was stuck, which was a refreshingly rare quality in Knock Out's recent experience. The sorts of Decepticons who got duty assignments out here on the outer fringes were fractious and self-aggrandizing, more likely to boast their competence and shift the blame when they failed than to admit ignorance and ask for help.

There was a reason Knock Out preferred to work alone. The price of Decepticon assistance was so rarely worth the value of the labor he got in return. Exceptions to the rule like Breakdown were few and far between out here. It was certainly a pleasant surprise for Knock Out the laborer, who wanted to complete this onerous task as quickly as possible.

Knock Out the medic was intrigued too. Working together like this offered him a superb opportunity to observe Breakdown's physical impairments in action. It was an interesting case—when he moved slowly and concentrated on what he was doing, the big grounder didn't seem to have any problems. It was only when he let his attention lapse, or when he tried to force himself to move faster, that the symptoms started to manifest. His lack of coordination, clumsiness, and poor balance all summed together into a picture that was sending insistent pings to Knock Out's medical intuition.

Helping the last Stunticon had made a convenient bargaining chip when he convinced Blackout to release him from the cargo hold, but the well-being of a cyb was worth more to him than just leverage. Knock Out thought it was high time he started to make good on his pledge. Just watching Breakdown and mentally taking notes wasn't actually worth anything, after all, not unless he put his observations to good use.

Though the inventory project didn't leave him with a lot of spare time, he started dedicating some of it to research. He still had a few medical manuals to hand, stored carefully in a reinforced compartment in the maintenance bay; it was easy enough to take one or two to his quarters when he was off-duty. Reading and research had never been his strong point when it came to medicine, but it made a productive way to pass the cycles.

The alternatives were fretting uselessly about things currently out of his control and buffing the finish straight off his exoplating. It was almost enough to make the dry medical reading some engrossing and pleasant.

* * *

><p>There was quiet in the cargo bay as the two of them sorted through the crates of basic supplies that Blackout had pulled out of the outpost's medbay. Breakdown was sitting on the floor with a sack of loose nuts and bolts in his lap, the miscellany falling with soft clinks and clatters as he separated it out. Knock Out was working on a stack of mesh patches and regenerative gauzes, looking for breaches in the packaging and checking viability dates. With a swish and a thump, he tossed an expired package into the waste bin; the handful of damaged nuts and bolts that Breakdown had identified as unusable chimed in counterpoint as he dropped them in a moment later.<p>

It was a productive quiet, a pleasant quiet. Knock Out was enjoying himself, as much as any self-respecting cyb could enjoy such monotonous work.

That was why the distinct sound of skittering was such an unwelcome interruption.

Ever since Breakdown had started working with him, Blackout's Deployer had been noticeably absent. At first Knock Out had assumed Blackout was just relying on his big spy instead of his little one, but that presumed that Breakdown was reporting everything they did together to the flier. Though he'd been sure of that in the beginning, it hadn't taken Knock Out more than a few days to change his mind. Breakdown was so reticent to talk _about_ Blackout that Knock Out could only assume he didn't willingly talk _to_ Blackout. And it was easy to assume further that if Breakdown didn't like the big flier, then he probably didn't like the drone any better.

So when he detected the scrabbling approach of the arachnoid Deployer, Knock Out purged his vents in a snort and didn't bother to modulate the disdain in his voice when he groused, "Bug's back."

"Huh," Breakdown said, distractedly sorting another few usable bolts from his palm into the storage jars Knock Out had provided him. Only when he was done did he look up. "What'd you—" he started, but then he must have heard the sound of the drone's approach, because he went silent and the touch of confusion on his face cleared.

Knock Out still couldn't believe the way Breakdown's smile made his whole face more handsome, how it made Knock Out want to smile in return whether he had a reason to or not. It was particularly unpleasant contrast to the way his fuel surged when Breakdown said, with all evidence of pleasure, "Hey! It's Scorponok!"

"That thing has a _name_?" he said. There was an embarrassing snap in his voice, but better to sound annoyed than to reveal of shocked he was that Breakdown apparently liked the creeping little spy.

"Yeah, of course he does," Breakdown said, his smile gone again just as fast as it had come. His expression was uncertain as he looked up at Knock Out. "Didn't you know that?"

Crossing his arms, Knock Out turned his face away. "Obviously not," he said, struggling to get his discomfiture under control and not really succeeding.

A huff of vents was all he got in response as Breakdown climbed to his feet. He called out a wordless buzzing trill, the sound returned a moment later by the drone as it clambered into view at the top of a stack of crates.

"C'mere," Breakdown said, walking over to the crates and holding his hands up in invitation. With a metal-on-metal squeal that made Knock Out wince, the Deployer leaped into Breakdown's arms.

Apparently heedless of the new scrapes in his finish, Breakdown came back to the workmat and resumed his seat on the floor. Scolding him all the way, the drone wriggled out of his arms and hauled itself up over the broad shelf of his chest, climbing up to his shoulder. With a flick of its tail that glanced off the side of Breakdown's helm, it settled itself.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Knock Out asked, unable to keep the horror out of his voice. So much for keeping his emotions to himself.

Breakdown rumbled a laugh. "Not much," he said, with a shrug that made the drone scold him all the louder. "He's only little."

What could Knock Out say to that? He certainly wouldn't have let that drone—_any_ drone—scrabble its clawed little feet all over his finish. If Breakdown wanted to get all scratched up, well, that was his prerogative. Knock Out certainly wasn't going to interfere.

"Just don't let him come over here," he said finally, into a silence that felt expectant. It was a weak sally, but Breakdown grunted an acknowledgement, and that was good enough for him.

There was a new quality to the quiet now, though, their companionable productivity disturbed by the fidgeting of the drone over Breakdown's shoulders. It didn't seem inclined to sit still; constantly it shifted its position, rearranging its many limbs or clacking its claws together. Occasionally it would climb from one part of Breakdown's armor to another, making an exceptional racket as it went. Breakdown wasn't quiet anymore either, laughing softly at its antics or talking to it, or sometimes even just humming a counterpoint to its almost constant vocal chatter.

His obvious ease and comfort with the drone seemed to stick in Knock Out's gears. As much as he tried to tune them out, he couldn't quite manage it. He found himself watching them as much as his own work, his own fingers moving slow over the packages he was inspecting.

"Uh, doc," Breakdown said finally, catching him looking. "You all right?"

So much for not telegraphing his upset. Since when had he had so much trouble keeping his emotions under wraps? Why was he already comfortable enough in Breakdown's presence to let himself slip like this?

"I don't like Deployers much," Knock Out said, the lie sounding awkward even to him. He gave his head a shake. "—No. I don't like _that_ Deployer much."

What was _wrong_ with him? It wasn't that Knock Out made a habit of lying, but he was a strong proponent of polite fictions, and 'I don't like Deployers' was a perfect excuse for his antipathy towards Blackout's drone. Why had he kept talking?

"Why not?" Breakdown asked.

"It's Blackout's, isn't it?" Knock Out said, and he could have disabled his own vocalizer manually for it. What was it about Breakdown that compelled him to honesty like this?!

"Yeah, okay," Breakdown said, chuckling, "but you shouldn't hold that against Scorpy. It's not his fault his host's a stripgears."

—Well. Maybe that had something to do with it: the conspiratorial way Breakdown laughed, the way he didn't miss a beat acknowledging Knock Out's point, the complete lack of judgment or defensiveness in him.

Breakdown flashed him a grin and then got up, one hand bracing the drone—Scorponok—absently. He dug around in the waste bin they were both using, and then walked over to Knock Out and knelt in front of him.

"Can he have these?" he asked, showing Knock Out a palmful of discarded hardware. The broken bolts, rusted nuts, warped washers were all scrap. Oh, scrap metal had value, of course; it could be machined into other components, or melted down and reforged. Knock Out made a habit of collecting it, either to use for himself or to trade, but a handful of nuts and bolts weren't worth much on their own.

Though he was tempted to refuse on the principle of denying something, even indirectly, to Blackout, he found he was more interested to see what use Breakdown and the drone could possibly have for the handful of scrap. Knock Out nodded assent.

"Thanks," Breakdown said, and sat down right there on the floor, less than an arm's reach away. He coaxed the drone down from his shoulder, chucking it under the chin when it settled in his lap. He picked one of the hardware discards out of his palm and offered it pinched between his blunt fingertips.

To Knock Out's surprise, the bug ate it.

One by one, Breakdown fed the drone the discards. It consumed them with all evidence of eagerness, grabbing at the mech's fingers and waving its tail—the blades at the tip safely tucked away in their sheaths—back and forth over its carapace. Between the crunches and the grinding of its mandibles and the mechanisms behind them, Knock Out could hear it chattering to itself.

He was so intent on watching Breakdown's hands that he didn't realize Breakdown was watching _him_ until those hands stilled and Knock Out looked up. He hadn't even realized he'd leaned forward, but he straightened up now, his own hands flexing and uncurling unconsciously. "What?" he asked, far more defensively than he would have liked.

Breakdown chuckled at him. "You seen many Deployers?" he asked.

"...No," Knock Out admitted. No point in denying it, since his interest—and unfamiliarity—was obvious. "Only a few, and only as patients."

"No wonder you don't like 'em much," Breakdown said, nodding thoughtfully to himself. "Scorponok always gets mean when he's hurt, mostly because Blackout gets scared."

Knock Out snorted. "Blackout? Scared? Please." He would believe it when he saw it; the big ones like Blackout never seemed to feel anything but aggression and superiority.

"Yeah, I know," Breakdown said. "It doesn't happen often. An' he likes to pretend it doesn't happen _ever_—but we know better, don't we, Scorp?" He stroked the Deployer's back, running his fingers up the inside curve of the tail and swatting the mechanism at the end lightly. With a _snick_, the blades disengaged from their housings, but the drone retracted them again immediately, chirring pleasantly as it did.

It reached up for Breakdown's other hand, swiping at his upturned palm. "Nuh-uh, not yet," Breakdown chided it. He offered his hand to Knock Out instead; there was one last rusted, bent washer sitting on it. "You wanna try?"

Knock Out eyed the washer for a moment, sitting very still while he considered; then, decided, he picked it out of Breakdown's hand with the very tips of his claws. "Oh, I suppose," he said, making himself sound far more confident than he felt about the prospect of offering his fingers to the drone.

Bracing one elbow against his thigh, Knock Out leaned towards the drone, offering it the waste washer between his fingertips the same way Breakdown had earlier. Scorponok clattered at him and crept up one of Breakdown's legs to perch on the knee. Knock Out couldn't help but feel that the blank lenses of its simple optics were watching him malevolently. Gone was the wriggling affection it had shared with Breakdown; it seemed again the wary, feral creature that had stalked him regularly at Blackout's behest.

He was just starting to reconsider trying this when the Deployer struck, lashing Knock Out across the wrist with its tail. Knock Out jerked back with a yell, his other hand clamping the wound automatically—only there was nothing beyond a blunt and fading impact pain: no spurting fluid, no severed circuitry, no sparks. No wound.

The drone had kept its blades sheathed.

It jumped off Breakdown's knee with a fluting cry and chased after the washer, which was bouncing erratically away across the floor. Knock Out stared after it, frowning.

Breakdown was staring after it too. "Huh," he said. "He doesn't like you very much."

"You don't say," Knock Out said. He tried to sound unbothered, but something in the way he said it made Breakdown look from the skittering drone back to him. Knock Out averted his optics and levered himself up hastily, heedless of the packages he was scattering out of their careful stacks around his seat.

His movements made the drone look up too, although it seemed more interested in its snack than in him. Its mandibles were already rasping away at the washer, its tail waving over its back with lazy contentment. Regardless, Knock Out was careful to give it a wide berth as he hurried away.

"Doc?" Breakdown called after him. "You leaving?"

"That's right," Knock Out said, refusing to look back at the other mech as he answered. "I trust you can finish what you're doing without me."

"Uh. Yeah, sure, I'll—I'll do my best, but—"

"Just finish," Knock Out said. "I'll check it tomorrow. And don't feed any of the good bolts to that _thing_."

It was a petty rejoinder, and Knock Out regretted it as soon as he said it—even moreso when Breakdown's response was a subdued, "All right." He still didn't trust himself to look back; not until he'd reached the lift did he feel in control of himself enough to turn back the way he'd come.

Breakdown was still sitting on the floor when Knock Out had left him, staring his shoulder after Knock Out, his expression open and bewildered. Scorponok had returned to his side and was pawing at his armor, but Breakdown was ignoring it. That made Knock Out feel smug and pleased—right until Breakdown shrugged and turned back around, scooping the drone into his lap again as he did.

It took Knock Out an effort of will not to stab at the up button. So much for maintaining his poise. He relied on his ability to keep his emotions to himself—to be able to choose when to reveal what he was really feeling and when to conceal it—to keep himself safe. Breakdown disarmed those careful defenses of his, and the worst part was that the other mech didn't even seem to realize he was doing it.

It might have been nice to have competent assistance with his work, but it wasn't worth this price. Whatever he might have been thinking otherwise, Knock Out was going to be glad to see the backs of _both_ of his unwelcome shipmates.

The trick was going to be making himself believe that.


	14. Chapter 14

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to my beta-readers, and special thanks to Dirge for letting me bounce ideas off her and helping keep my Breakdown in line. _Mercenary Medicine_ wouldn't be the story it is today without you, Dirge.

**MAJOR MAJOR CONTENT WARNING THIS CHAPTER FOR DISCUSSION OF **_**SUICIDE**_- including suicidal ideation and an indirect suicide attempt. ADDITIONAL CONTENT WARNING for violence and physical intimidation.

* * *

><p>When Knock Out returned to the cargo bay the next day, Breakdown was already present and waiting for him. The bigger mech was holding a datapad in hands—<em>no<em>, Knock Out realized, not just any datapad. It was the one Knock Out was keeping his inventory documents on. Optics narrowed and expression wary, Knock Out stepped off the lift and started towards him.

"Hey," Breakdown said, giving Knock Out a little nod that almost seemed deferential.

"Breakdown," Knock Out said, returning the courtesy. No easy greetings or friendly smiles today; Knock Out firmly reminded himself that this was a _good_ thing. He was not going to miss Breakdown's presence when the bigger mech was gone. He was _not_.

Indicating the inventory datapad with a gesture, he made sure his tone was sharp when he asked, "What are you doing with that?"

Breakdown shifted his weight back a little, starting to turn the pad in his fingers. "I finished sorting, like you said, but it didn't take me long," he said. "And I didn't want to, uh, bother you after you'd left, so I..." He trailed off for a moment, then squared his shoulders and raised his head, looking Knock Out dead in the optics. "So I sealed up all the jars and logged everything in here." He waved the pad.

Knock Out frowned. "You know you're not supposed to—"

"And then it was still early," Breakdown continued, raising his voice with sudden belligerence and talking over Knock Out, "so I finished up what you were doing too."

Glancing past Breakdown to where he'd been working yesterday, Knock Out could see that the packages he'd scattered were all tidied up and separated into neat stacks.

It was hard not to read Breakdown's words as a jab at Knock Out's productivity, and his instinct was to be nasty in return. Knock Out swallowed his first petty retort, though; he didn't want to alienate Breakdown entirely, after all. The mech's help was useful to him. Knock Out just wanted to keep him at arm's length, where he needed to be.

"You were just supposed to separate out the hardware," Knock Out said, keeping his voice as even as possible. "And who told you to do any data entry, hm?"

"Oh come on! I'm not _stupid_." Breakdown's fingers tightened on the pad. "I used to help Dead End keep things straight in the medbay. I know how to check and see if regen meshes are still good and I know how to use a datapad. This isn't my first inventory."

The bitterness in the bigger mech's voice was acute enough that Knock Out actually backed a step away from him, his processor in his chest humming up with alarm. He could feel defensive subroutines starting to kick on but he didn't let them boot all the way, closing his eyes and focusing for a moment on throttling the automatic threat response.

"All right," he said finally, keeping his voice as even as possible. "Forgive me." He held out a hand for the pad. "I do hope you don't mind if I check it over?"

For a moment, Knock Out thought Breakdown wasn't going to relinquish it without a fight, but then the big shoulders slumped and the other mech put the pad into his hand. Knock Out managed a tight little smile of thanks as he accepted it and then swept past him to find a seat.

"What do you want me to do next?" Breakdown asked. Gone was the bitterness in the bigger mech's voice; now he sounded only flat, like he had before they'd started working together. When Knock Out looked up at him, the orange face of his was as devoid of expression as his voice had been of emotion. For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other.

It was Knock Out's turn to fidget with the datapad. This sudden return of Breakdown's emotional dissociation was alarming from both a professional and personal standpoint; nor was it lost on Knock Out that the way he had just treated Breakdown had triggered this.

"Open one of those up and tell me what's in it," Knock Out said carefully, reining in the hostility that he'd been utilizing deliberately only a few moments before. He indicated the crates they hadn't gotten to yet. "I'll let you know then what to do with it."

With an affirmative grunt, Breakdown turned away. Knock Out watched after him for a moment, but the bigger mech showed all signs of obedience to his request. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the datapad. He'd check it over quickly and then rejoin Breakdown—the sooner the two of them could figure out a new working relationship, the better. He knew he'd sacrificed the easy camaraderie they'd shared until now, but Knock Out was willing to endure that. He wouldn't even have to endure it for very long; they were almost finished here. Only Knock Out's equipment and supplies were left to catalogue, and a few containers of salvage—

Knock Out's head snapped up so fast that the actuators in his neck actually squealed in protest.

Just as he'd been instructed, Breakdown was pulling down a crate to work on, but this wasn't one of the containers that Blackout had transferred aboard. No, this was one of Knock Out's, identifiable by the old, scuffed paint. All of his cargo containers had been acquired second-hand, mostly scrounged out of derelict cargo haulers; what was left of the personal logos and paint schemes stood in stark contrast to the plain utilitarian design of the military-issue crates from the outpost.

Breakdown dropped the crate to the floor with a thump and went to one knee beside it. He reached for the latches.

"Wait!" Knock Out scrambled to his feet, heedless of the datapad clattering down behind him. "Breakdown, wait! Not that one, don't open that one!"

The big fingers hesitated and Breakdown looked over at Knock Out. Gone from his face was the distant lack of expression—now he looked distinctly annoyed. It was enough to stop Knock Out in his tracks.

"Why not?" There was a rumble like distant thunder in Breakdown's voice.

Knock Out couldn't tell him, though. Knock Out knew he couldn't tell him, didn't _dare_ tell him what was in those containers. His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as he struggled to come up with a suitable fiction and failed. "Just—just trust me," he said finally. "Please, trust me. You don't want to open that."

Something in what he said made the annoyance on Breakdown's face crystallize into open rebellion. "Don't tell me what I want," he muttered, hunching his head down into his shoulders and turning back to the container. He wrenched the lid straight off, without even disengaging the latches.

He threw the damaged lid aside, the sound of its impact enough to make Knock Out jump. All those alarm routines that he'd tried to suppress earlier hard-booted to active life now, and all of them were screaming at Knock Out to _run_. He felt bolted to the floor, though, transfixed by the preternatural stillness of Breakdown's body.

When Breakdown did move, it was to bend stiffly to one knee and reach into the crate. What he drew out of it, Knock Out couldn't see around his broad body, but it made the bigger mech's engine throttle up in his chest.

That sound was the only warning Knock Out had before Breakdown whirled up out of his crouch and lunged at him. The slow, careful Breakdown he'd grown used to working with was gone; in his place, a rushing fury, roaring as he slammed into Knock Out and grappled him down to the floor. Knock Out landed hard, damage readouts blossoming across his HUD as Breakdown fell on top of him.

Pinning Knock Out down with one hand, Breakdown brandished something in his face with the other. Knock Out had to blink his HUD clear to see it, but when he did he knew immediately what he was looking at: the yellow hand and forearm of one of the Stunticons.

"What is this?" Breakdown asked, shaking the hand at him. "What is this doing here?!"

"Please, Breakdown—" Knock Out said—or tried to. No sound came out. The impact must have fritzed his vocalizer.

The bigger mech dug his fingers into the collaring of Knock Out's exoplate. Lifting his torso up off the floor, Breakdown shook him hard. "Tell me!"

Knock Out tried to speak, but he could only produce static. He grabbed at his throat, trying to indicate that he _couldn't_ speak, but Breakdown either failed to grasp the significance of the gesture or failed to care. He staggered to his feet and hauled Knock Out up with him, dragging him over to the open crate and dropping him beside it.

"This is Drag Strip!" Breakdown said. He flung the arm down into the container hard enough that it bounced, landing against the far lip with the hand outstretched in an obscene parody of a living gesture.

_I know,_ Knock Out wanted to say, his mouth working uselessly with the words his vocalizer wouldn't produce. He looked up at Breakdown, shaking his head and clutching his throat, but the other mech misunderstood the gesture.

"_It is!_" Breakdown howled. His hand fell heavily on Knock Out's shoulder, turning him back to face Breakdown and shaking him again. "Why aren't you sayin' anything?"

Even had his vocalizer been functioning, Knock Out couldn't have responded. He hissed static as the bigger mech shoved him away. Staggering backwards, he tried to put space between them two of them—forgetting that the open crate was immediately behind him. He tripped and fell hard into the salvage.

"That's Drag Strip in there! Get out!" Breakdown didn't even give him a chance to comply, seizing his arm and hauling him off the crate with so much force that Knock Out stumbled and fell in the opposite direction. Breakdown fell heavily to the floor beside him, knees impacting first, fists pounding against the floor an instant later. "Is he the only one you have? What about—what about the others?" His voice broke. "Are they in boxes too?"

Engine revving frantically in his chest, Knock Out stared helplessly at the powerful hands grinding into the floor so very close to his face. There was no mistaking the anguish in Breakdown's voice now, but Knock Out found himself more concerned with those fists and if they were going to be pounding Ihim/I than anything else. Gathering his arms under himself, Knock Out rolled away from the distraught mech—and felt the hum of his vocalizer resetting in his throat as he did it.

"_Vitalis!_" he screamed. "_Alarms!_ Alarms now!"

The ship responded instantly, klaxons starting to blare and the orange emergency indicators lighting up all over the cargo bay. The sudden sound and light show startled Breakdown, who tried to get to his feet too fast for his impaired coordination. He toppled back down to the floor with a groan, one arm shielding his optics from the strobing glare of the lights.

Scrambling to his feet, Knock Out evolved the circular saws in his hands and brandished the wickedly serrated blades in front of himself. Moving this time with more care, Breakdown clambered to his feet; Knock Out was quick to retreat away from him, spinning the saws in nervous little bursts.

"What're you gonna do with those?" Breakdown asked, glowering at him. "Hurt me?" The emergency lights cast his sneer into lurid relief, the intermittent flashing exaggerating the twisted expression on his face even further. "Can't hurt me any more than you have already, can you?"

"Breakdown, I don't want to have to hurt you at all!" Knock Out shouted the words desperately, but Breakdown wasn't listening. He was already charging Knock Out again, his fisted hands outflung.

Knock Out had his feet under him now, though, and it was easy enough to dodge Breakdown's clumsy advance. As he sidestepped away, he tucked his blades in close to his chest; he'd meant it, when he said that he didn't want to hurt Breakdown. If it came to it, he would defend himself with as much force as was necessary, but he was hoping that it _wouldn't_ come to it.

"Be reasonable, Breakdown, please!" he called, putting his weapons up again as Breakdown turned slowly to face him, following his retreat.

"Frag reasonable," the bigger mech said, so quietly that Knock Out almost didn't hear him over the continued sound of the alarms. The despair in his voice was unmistakable, a poignant contrast to his aggression and the trembling tension in his body that promised yet further violence.

At the far end of the cargo hold, the lift engaged. Knock Out had never heard a more welcome sound in his entire life. As Breakdown straightened up to watch the descending platform, Knock Out took advantage of the other grounder's distraction and scurried to meet Blackout.

"What is going on down here?" Blackout asked, bellowing to be heard over the commotion of the klaxons. He loomed over Knock Out, optics flashing. "Silence your ship!"

Transforming one saw back to a hand, Knock Out touched his helm and activated his link to the ship and relayed the command.

The lights quit flashing immediately, the alarms cutting an instant behind them. Into the sudden silence came the sound of Breakdown's uneven footfalls as he staggered over to the open crate. With a tremendous crash he flung it over, spilling the contents across the floor. "Did you know about this?" he demanded of Blackout.

The huge flier recoiled from the spill of salvage. "No," he said, the word punctuated with a chuff of air from his vents. "I had no idea."

Both of them turned towards Knock Out, and the expression on Blackout's face made him abruptly reconsider his proximity to the giant. Backing away from Blackout, he sought to put some space between himself and the other two mechs, but he couldn't go very far. The inventory had opened up some free space in the cargo bay, but the simultaneous presence of Blackout and Breakdown made that free space seem very crowded. The rev of his engine in his chest when he backed himself right into an equipment case was overloud in the quiet.

Blackout nudged a disjointed leg with his foot, making it rock against the floor. "Is there…more," he asked, picking his words with apparent care, "like this?"

Breakdown obviously felt no such compunction towards diplomacy. He kicked the empty crate away towards the loading hatch at the other end of the cargo bay; the tremendous crash it made when it landed was enough to make Knock Out jump, even though it had impacted nowhere near him.

"Did you chop up the rest of my team and shove them in boxes too?" Breakdown asked, his voice low. "Or is Drag Strip the only one you _desecrated_?" His back was turned, his shoulders hunched high and tight like he was in physical pain. As Knock Out watched, one of his hands transformed into a hammer, then back, then again. He wondered it Breakdown realized he was doing it. Then Breakdown clanged the hammer into the palm of his other hand and turned, and Knock Out had more important things to pay attention to.

Knock Out was trapped: trapped between these two very large mechs and the container at his back; trapped between Breakdown's furious aggression and Blackout's disdain; trapped between their uncomprehending disapproval and the brutal pragmatism that had impelled him to salvage the bodies in the first place. His processor raced, searching for a way to get him out of this with his plating intact, but none of the options he was coming up with were very good.

While he was very tempted to lie—it wouldn't be the first time he'd misrepresented the provenance of his supplies—he knew he didn't dare risk it. They would only have to open one of the other containers to learn the truth, and there where would he be, caught out in so obvious a falsehood?

He had little choice. Transforming the remaining saw back into his hand, he spread both of them, palms up, and bowed his head. "Yes," he said quietly. "I took all four of them."

Breakdown reeled back like Knock Out had hit him. "How dare you?" he breathed, and the words were a moan of pain. He clutched at his chest with one hand for a moment, but then that hand transformed too and he was glaring at Knock Out. "_How dare you?!_ I oughta—"

"You will do nothing, Breakdown," Blackout said.

Breakdown spun to face the big flier. "_What?_ Blackout, those are my brothers! He's got my brothers in those boxes—"

"I know."

"—And I'm gonna kill him for it!" he continued, like he hadn't heard Blackout's calm words. He turned away and flung himself at Knock Out, but before Knock Out could do more than evolve his saws again, Blackout had intercepted the charge. Effortlessly, he swung the grounder around and bore him backwards, slamming him up against a high wall of crates.

"You will not," Blackout said.

"Don't tell me what to do," Breakdown growled. "You're gonna have to kill _me_ if you don't want me to kill him!" He tried to swing his hammers at Blackout, but the way Blackout had him pinned robbed him of the leverage and mobility he needed to wield them successfully. They bounced harmlessly off the huge mech's plating.

More than any of Breakdown's clumsy blows, it was his words that had an effect on Blackout. The big flier flinched, the stabilizing spines hanging down his back clamping tight with a clang. His words were carried on the hissing of his vents. "I won't."

"Then I'll make you." Breakdown started to struggle in earnest, thrashing and kicking and banging his hammers harder into Blackout's sides and back. "Kill me, I know you can," he said. "I know you want to be rid of me. Just kill me!"

Shaking his head, Blackout stepped back from Breakdown, releasing his hold on him. Breakdown rushed him—or tried to, tripping over his own two feet and falling into the bigger mech. Blackout wrapped his arms around him, crushing Breakdown against his chest. Ducking his face close to the grounder's helm, he whispered, "I want no such thing."

His voice so quiet, Knock Out couldn't be sure that he'd heard him right. What he was sure about was that he didn't want to be here at all; catalyst though he may have been to Breakdown's episode, Knock Out was very aware that he was an unwelcome observer to grief he couldn't even begin to comprehend. He forced his saws to transform again, back to hands, the sound of it making him wince. It seemed loud and intrusive, but neither of the other two mechs even acknowledged him.

Breakdown collapsed against Blackout, his vents starting to cycle in rhythmic sobs. "I should be dead too. I should be in one of those boxes with the rest of my brothers. Blackout, please—"

"Do you have any idea how rare it is for a Cybertronian to survive the loss of their entire gestalt team?" Blackout said, interrupting Breakdown's impassioned plea. His tone was crisp, at odds with the raw emotion in Breakdown's. The big grounder went silent.

"It never happens," Blackout continued. "Your spark should have guttered out with theirs— No. Let me finish." Breakdown, mouth open to interrupt, closed it again and remained silent. He squirmed fitfully in Blackout's arms, but the flier didn't release him. "It should have, but it didn't. What do you think they would think of you for wanting to give up? What would Drag Strip say if you told him you wanted to quit?"

An expectant silence fell, with Blackout watching Breakdown intently and Knock Out watching both of them. Breakdown didn't say anything, the silence stretching for several fraught moments before his shoulders slumped and he averted his optics.

Blackout released his fervent hold on Breakdown, gripping his shoulders and pushing him out to arm's reach. "You know they wouldn't want you to give up on yourself, right?" he asked.

Breakdown shrugged and shifted his weight back and forth a little, uncertainly. "How'm I supposed to get through this without them?"

"You weren't always gestalted," Blackout said. "The link isn't meant to be broken, but that doesn't mean it _can't_ be. You can learn to be an autonomous mech again."

Shaking his head so hard his whole body shuddered, Breakdown tried to pull out of Blackout's grip. "I don't want to!"

"But your brothers would want you to," Blackout insisted, holding Breakdown tight. "I didn't know them as well as you did, but I'm sure of that. How come you aren't?"

Breakdown tried to pull away again, and this time Blackout released him. Turning away from the flier, Breakdown wrapped his arms around himself. He shrugged again in lieu of a verbal response.

"I know this is hard on you now, Breakdown, but things will get easier for you over time," Blackout continued, his gruff voice gentler than Knock Out had ever heard it.

"You promise?" Breakdown mumbled, still not looking at the bigger mech.

"I promise."

"…All right." Breakdown straightened up a little, turning to look at Blackout—who stepped adroitly between him and the mess of parts still spread across the floor. Putting an arm around the grounder's shoulders, Blackout led him towards the lift. As he ushered him onto the platform, the stabilizing spines on his back parted and he ejected Scorponok. The little Deployer scurried over his shoulder and down his arm, transferring over to Breakdown with an enthusiastic chirp.

Though their backs were turned to him, Knock Out could hear Breakdown's brief chuckle clearly. "Hey Scorp," he said, though it was only a weak echo of the enthusiasm he'd displayed the day before for the drone's presence.

Blackout exchanged a few words with Breakdown, now too soft for Knock Out to hear, then engaged the lift and stepped back. Breakdown and Scorponok rode it together into the ceiling, and were gone.

"Is that wise?" Knock Out asked as Blackout turned slowly to face him. "Sending him off alone? He's—"

"I know," Blackout said firmly. "Scorponok will monitor him for me. I think the immediate danger is past, but if his condition…deteriorates…"

"You mean if he tries to kill himself," Knock Out said.

The look Blackout gave him made him regret the bald words. After a moment, though, the flier acknowledged it with a nod and a quiet, "Yes. If he tries to kill himself, Scorponok will alert me. We should be able to mobilize in time to stop him."

"Is that wise?" Knock Out repeated, prompting Blackout to glare at him again. He soldiered on anyway. "If he's really so unhappy— I mean, if he's determined, we may not be able to—"

"I've already lost four Stunticons," Blackout snapped, spines rattling against his back as he started to stalk towards Knock Out. "I'm not going to lose the fifth." A nasty sneer twisted his mouth. "What happened to helping him come to terms with what happened to him?"

Having his own words thrown back at him like that made Knock Out bristle, and it took a conscious effort to force himself to relax and calm down again. "I'd certainly prefer that to helping a patient terminate himself," he said, with his best professional smile. "Of course, the question remains—what can we do for him? You know far more than I about what he's going through right now."

"Breakdown can wait," Blackout said brusquely, dismissing Knock Out's question with a wave of his hand.

Knock Out stared at him. "Breakdown can… wait? Breakdown just tried to commit suicide-by-proxy—with you as the proxy! He needs more right now than just being—being told he should stay alive because it's what his dead gestaltmates would want. Unless—" Knock Out stopped suddenly, scrutinizing Blackout's face. "Unless you really think that's all it's going to take?"

Blackout turned away from him. "Didn't you hear what I said earlier?" he asked. "There has never been a recorded case of a gestalted cyb surviving the death of their entire team. One or two members, and the rest of the team can compensate for the trauma; there is protocol for that. This, however, is outside my experience." He looked sidelong over his shoulder at Knock Out. "I don't _know_ what it's going to take to bring him through this."

"I don't either," Knock Out said, "but I don't think guilting him and then packing him off with only a _drone_ for company is it!"

The words made Blackout flinch, his hands curling into huge fists. Abruptly he turned, optics blazing as he glared at Knock Out. "My primary responsibility to Breakdown right now is to get him to Chaar alive; they'll have medical staff there who are actually _competent_ to treat him."

The dig at Knock Out's medical abilities made his engine turn over in his chest. "You don't have to—" he started, and then the word _Chaar_ penetrated his ire and his thoughts skidded to a stop. "…Chaar? Did you say Chaar?"

Blackout nodded. "General Strika is waiting for my report on the defeat of the Stunticons, and thanks to your scavenging, I may be able to give her a complete one." There was a grudging note of acknowledgement in the flier's voice, but Knock Out was far too preoccupied with Blackout's casual revelation to take advantage of it.

"We're going to Chaar," Knock Out said. His voice was faint. "You're taking this ship to Chaar?"

Blackout purged his vents so hard they rattled. "Did I not just say that?"

"I refuse!" Knock Out sliced his hands through the air in front of his chest, shaking his head vehemently. "_Vitalis_ is _not_ going to Chaar. I'll drop you at a relay point, or we can find a transport headed there to rendezvous with, but we are _not_—"

"This is not up for debate."

Knock Out shut his mouth with a click on the rest of his words, and stared up at Blackout with narrowed optics. He had known better than to think the danger was passed now that Breakdown's anger had been neutralized—Blackout was too antagonistic towards him for Knock Out to ever feel safe in his presence—but he hadn't expected _this_ to be the threat he would have to respond to. This was big.

"This is my ship," he said, struggling to keep his distress under control. "I won't let you take it there."

"This _was_ your ship," Blackout said, standing up a little straighter and folding his arms across his chest. "Now it's mine, and we're going to Chaar."

"_Vitalis_ is not a military vessel for you to claim just because of your rank—!"

"Then _Vitalis_ has been commandeered in the name of Lord Megatron and the Decepticon Empire, and we're _still_ going to Chaar." Blackout unfolded his arms and, in three swift steps, crossed over the mess of salvage on the floor. Knock Out attempted to retreat but he was still backed up against the big equipment case; there was nowhere for him to go. Striking out with a big hand, Blackout pinned him painfully against the side of the container. Metal crumpled in the massive flier's grip. "If you don't like it," Blackout continued, looming over him, "I would be _happy_ to confine you until we arrive, and turn you over to Strika as a mutineer. How does that sound?"

_Like I'll be getting a head start,_ Knock Out thought, almost giddy with fear—although not so giddy that he made the mistake of saying that out loud. Mouth clamped shut to keep the traitorous words to himself, he only shook his head.

That was good enough for Blackout, apparently; the flier released him. Allowing Knock Out to withdraw, Blackout turned and surveyed the salvage strewn across the floor.

"Why didn't you tell me you had these?" he asked, indicating Drag Strip's remains and the other containers with a flick of his fingers.

Rubbing at the dents Blackout's thick fingers had left in the curve of his shoulder pauldron, Knock Out scowled at the flier's broad back. Why hadn't he said anything about the bodies he'd collected? Because the survivors reacted like _this_, with disgust and violence, and Knock Out was not in the habit of freely inviting aggression against his person.

He knew better than to put it so blatantly, though. "It has been my experience that most cybs prefer not to know the details of these sorts of salvage operations," he said, and it was true enough, if not the direct reason. "It's easier to pretend spare parts still come from a manufactory somewhere if the components I'm putting into my patients aren't tagged with the name of their donors."

Blackout grunted—an acknowledgement?—and then fell silent. Knock Out was happy to let him mull that over, taking advantage of the quiet moment to catalogue the rest of his injuries. He didn't have more than scrapes and dents, although the divots in his shoulder pauldron were deep enough that he was fairly certain he had some circuitry damage. He was definitely going to have to remove the plating and have a look—

The rumbling voice of the big flier interrupted his thoughts. "You said you took all four of the Stunticons? I want to see their bodies."

Knock Out suspected he knew what that meant: what that meant was 'I want you to unpack and arrange the bodies so I can examine them'. He knew also that obedience to Blackout's demands, even the unspoken ones, was in his best interests.

And he knew finally that he was exhausted, he was damaged, and he was fed up with the way Blackout was treating him. He marched past Blackout to the rest of the salvage, smacking one of the crates in the stack with the flat of his hand as he passed it. "They're all here. Help yourself. I'll be in the maintenance bay if you need me."

He expected to be taken to task for his impertinence, to be violently coerced into helping; it came as a shock that was almost physical to his primed body when Blackout only grunted an affirmative. Knock Out didn't dare stop to contemplate the motivation behind the big flier's lenience. He scurried over to the lift platform and gladly made his escape. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Title: **Mercenary Medicine**  
>Rating:<strong> T

**Summary:** Knock Out is a freelance medic— he works alone and he likes it that way. But when he finds a corpse that isn't as dead as it ought to be at the bottom of a pile of bodies, it puts his entire careful operation at risk.

**Disclaimer:** The characters of _Transformers: Prime_ and the _Transformers_ franchises are property of Hasbro; no profit is being made off their portrayal here.

**Author's Notes:** Set way before what we see in the show and nowhere near Earth. Contains copious amounts of worldbuilding and headcanon. Thank you to Dirge for letting me bounce ideas off her and helping keep my Breakdown in line, and to Theo for making me really think about what it was I was writing. _Mercenary Medicine_ wouldn't be the story it is today without either of you.

* * *

><p>Knock Out had been sequestered in the maintenance bay for only a cycle before he heard the doorpad chime. The sound was far from welcome; he still had enough nervous energy surging in his circuits that it made him flinch. The imager he was holding fell from his hands and clattered into the instrument tray beneath it, and that sound too made him jump. Softly, he swore, gripping on to the edge of the tray with both hands and squeezing like he needed an anchor.<p>

"_Vitalis_, who is it?" he asked quietly.

The icon representing his wireless link to the ship flashed in his HUD, printing the ID across the corner of his vision an instant later: Breakdown.

For a moment, Knock Out very seriously considered locking the door and hoping the other mech would take the hint and leave quietly. He was still revved up from the confrontation in the cargo hold; the aches and pains his body stood as active testament to the fact, despite how amiable he could be, Breakdown was also a very dangerous Cybertronian. Did Knock Out dare admit him, when only a cycle ago Breakdown had claimed to want to kill him?

And did he dare ignore him, knowing as he did that Breakdown might have just been trying to induce Knock Out to defend himself with lethal force?

Releasing his rigid hold on the instrument tray, Knock Out turned to the wall console, the one wired directly into the ship's systems. "Show me Breakdown," he said. His voice was uncharacteristically sober, strange even to him to hear, and it made him shiver. Like he needed _another_ reminder to tread carefully here.

Obligingly, the screen filled with a view from one of the security cameras in the common area outside. It showed him Breakdown from above and behind. The back three-quarters view didn't let him get a look at the other mech's face, but did let him see Breakdown reach out to prod the doorpad. The chime sounded again, and Knock Out heard it in strange stereo through the door and over the surveillance feed as he called out, "I know you're in there, doc. You gonna let me in?"

_I don't want to._ In the safety of his own head he could admit that he was afraid. He'd always had a hard time shutting down his alarm subroutines once they were activated, and they were still alive now, his processor trying to convince his brain that he remained in mortal danger.

Yet the thought of turning Breakdown away, of leaving him to fend for himself, Knock Out found unpalatable. _There will be medical staff on Chaar to help him,_ that's what Blackout had said, implying that Knock Out _couldn't_. Treating Breakdown as a salve to his professional pride was a good excuse for why he wanted to admit the other mech—but Knock Out knew himself well enough to recognize a justification when he heard one, even if it was only his own thoughts he was hearing.

In the safety of his own head he could admit that the core of it was that he felt responsible, at least in part, for the anguish Breakdown was enduring. And, curse his innate sense of medical responsibility, that meant he felt responsible for helping him come to terms with it. _That_ was why he wanted to let Breakdown in, against all his instincts for self-preservation.

The chime sounded a third time, drawing out into a strident buzz as Breakdown leaned on the button. As Knock Out watched the screen, Breakdown slumped forward, thumping his forehead into the door panel in front of him. "C'mon, doc," he murmured, and there was no stereo effect to his words this time. They weren't loud enough to make it through the door; Knock Out heard them only faintly over the surveillance feed, made tinny by the poor pickup of the camera.

There was no sign of the tense, violent mech who'd threatened him in the cargo hold; this Breakdown seemed only weary.

An icon flashed a question in Knock Out's HUD. He considered it for a moment longer, then inclined his head and murmured, "Go ahead, _Vitalis_." As Knock Out blanked the screen on the wall terminal, the door irised open and admitted the bigger mech.

"Hey, you actually let me in?" Breakdown said, blinking bemusedly. "I didn't think—uh. Am I interruptin' something?" He'd stopped in the open doorway and he was staring bemusedly at Knock Out—or rather, Knock Out's markedly asymmetrical chest.

"Not really," Knock Out said. "Just a little… maintenance." Removing his shoulder pauldron on his own had been a tricky maneuver, and one he didn't have a lot of practice in executing. He'd only gotten around to imaging the protoform structure underneath when Breakdown had come calling and—well, yes, interrupted him. But the procedure wasn't vital and he'd already seen enough to know that only his plating had been damaged, so he could afford the interruption.

He'd dropped the removed pauldron carelessly onto the medberth and he scooped it up now, aware of Breakdown's optics on him as he carried it over to the counter and set it down there instead. When he turned around again, the bigger mech was staring at the ugly wrinkles in the metal.

"Did I do that?" he asked. His voice was very quiet.

Knock Out shook his head.

"Then Blackout did," he said. "Over… my brothers?"

Knock Out shook his head again. "Call it an unrelated dispute," he said quietly.

Breakdown mulled that over for a moment, but whatever he thought of it, Knock Out couldn't tell from his expression. Finally, he said, "I wanted t'… t' ask you something. A coupla things."

"All right." Knock Out leaned back against the counter, next to his detached pauldron, and crossed his arms over his chest. "Go ahead."

The bigger mech didn't speak again immediately, though. Instead he stepped all the way into the room, letting the door close finally behind him. He glanced around the maintenance bay, then leaned up against the empty wall beside the door, straight across the room from Knock Out.

"I wanted to ask," he said, and then fell silent again, his mouth pressed into a line and his optics roaming. Knock Out waited patiently, and it wasn't too long before Breakdown blurted out his query: "Why do you have them in the hold?"

Knock Out certainly didn't have to ask who. "Tell me, Breakdown," he said instead, "where do spare parts come from?"

The question was enough to bring the other mech's gaze up to him, although Breakdown's optics only met his for an instant before moving nervously away again. "Uh. From factories?"

"Factories where?" Knock Out asked gently. "On Cybertron?"

"No, uh, I guess not," Breakdown said slowly. "From somewhere else?"

"Where else?" Knock Out spread his hands helplessly. "The moons are as dark as Cybertron has become. All of the industrial outposts we had are derelict now, or destroyed. And the colonies…" He trailed off.

After the exodus from Cybertron, the leaders of both factions had turned to the colonies as the next pivotal battleground of the war. Optimus Prime had arrived first, bearing his Matrix and all the theocratic authority it granted him, and promised the colonies the protection of the Autobots in exchange for their allegiance. Forewarned by neutral refugees from their war-torn homeworld and historically very independent, most of the colonies refused his offer.

Those few that didn't paid the price almost immediately, watching as their resources and citizens were fed into the Autobot war machine. The final outrage came when Prime had led the Autobots in a desperate sack of Century City on Chirus-5. Autobot High Command claimed that it was the only possible way to foil a covert Decepticon attempt to take the city by force. Decepticon intel collected prior to the sack indicated that the government on Chirus-5 had learned that the mad scientist Brainstorm had contracted lab space and manufacturing facilities from the locals—despite a specific prohibition against planetside weapons development—and were taking action to revoke the sanctuary they'd granted the Autobots.

Regardless, the atrocity was enough to make the colonies close rank—against _both_ factions.

"We're not gettin' any help from the colonies," Breakdown said into the silence.

"No. And from what I hear, most of the outposts out here are barely getting _orders_, much less supply—although you'd know more about that than me."

The bigger mech shook his head. "Not me. I don't know much about orders," he said. "I just…y'know. Listened to Motormaster. He was in charge of us."

"Not Blackout?" Knock Out asked with automatic curiosity.

Breakdown snorted. "Blackout was in charge of our unit, sure. But Motormaster was in charge of _us_."

"I see."

"So you… you get parts off the dead, is that it?" he continued. His words were coming slow, but this sluggishness was thoughtful Breakdown, not lethargic Breakdown or disinterested Breakdown. Knock Out nodded, but remained silent, letting him articulate his thoughts at his own pace.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised, huh? I mean, 'Rider—Wildrider used to do that sometimes, to get stuff for his prototypes." The other grounder's roaming eyes settled again on Knock Out, narrowing suddenly. "He only ever salvaged off 'Bots, though."

"Given that you were the only Decepticon unit in this star system, I can't say that surprises me," Knock Out said, the words as delicate as he could make them.

Breakdown puzzled over that for a minute, then surprised him with a laugh. "Good point."

"Thank you," Knock Out said, inclining his head in Breakdown's direction. "I usually can't afford to be so discriminating, I'm afraid. I try to take anything I can get—_before_ the Autobots get their hands on it."

Nor was it just the Autobots he was in competition with. He may have been the only medic working this sector, but he was far from the only salvager. A cyb could make a very comfortable living out here, peddling the goods that the requisition officers in core space always promised and rarely delivered.

"Better a 'Con than some slagging Autobot, yeah," Breakdown said. He slouched against the wall, the joints and servos starting to grind as he absently limbered up his knuckles. "So you're… you're planning on using them for spare parts, is that it?"

"Pursuant, of course, to your wishes," he said, bowing his head. "If you'd rather I didn't, I won't—although it will be up to you to figure out what to do with the, ah, remains in that case."

Breakdown mulled it over for a few minutes, the joints of his fingers popping in sequence as he worked them over. Knock Out tried not to watch his big hands _too_ obviously, although after a moment he had to give up his effort for a failure. He looked away on the pretense of re-organizing the tray of tools he'd dropped his imager onto.

"Could we smelt 'em…?" Breakdown asked finally. His voice was hesitant, and he didn't look surprised when Knock Out shook his head. Smelting was, to most cybs, more acceptable than scavenging as a method of recycling a terminated Cybertronian's body; smelting also required dedicated facilities, mortuary techs trained in the rites of disassembly, and enough fuel to keep the pits themselves burning. The process was said to purge the body of the various impurities of a life long lived, so that the spark might rejoin the Allspark free of guilt and regret—and more practically, reclaimed as much of the metal that went into a functioning Cybertronian as possible for re-use elsewhere.

They'd left the smelting pits behind on Cybertron, just another artifact of a resource-intensive practice that the planet and its people could no longer maintain.

Purging his vents in a long sigh, Breakdown dropped his optics to the floor. "Their parts are gonna go into other 'Cons, right?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Hn. Listen, I—I gotta think about it. Is that okay?" He peeked up at Knock Out, who had to look away from the uncertain, almost abashed expression on his face.

"Yes," he said quickly. "Yes, of course. I won't do anything further with the remains until I get any answer from you—although I think you should know that Blackout's inspecting them now."

"He's what?" Breakdown straightened up and pushed away from the wall, his optics flashing. "Why?"

Knock Out spread his hands. "I believe he's attempting to determine what, ah, happened to them."

Just as quickly as he'd bristled with aggression, Breakdown deflated again. He stepped back, bumped against the wall, and leaned heavily against it. "Oh. Uh. Yeah. That… makes sense. Guess I'll decide when he's done, then…"

He trailed off like he expected a response to that, but it wasn't exactly Knock Out's place to dictate a timeline for Breakdown deciding what to do with the remains and he knew it. He made a noncommittal noise and watched the other mech sidelong for a few minutes, but the bigger grounder's expression was distant and his optics dim. Knock Out gave him a few minutes' peace with his thoughts, then prompted him with a gentle, "What else can I do for you?"

The question drew the bigger mech out of his reverie. He gave himself a little shake and said, "I was thinkin' about some things, some of the stuff Blackout said to me, and, uh, I was hoping you could tell me what's wrong with me. The, the—" He waved one hand through the air with an exaggerated wobbling motion. "You know."

He had to be talking about his poor coordination, his sluggish reflexes, the lethargy and the glitching gyros—and Knock Out, of course, had been working on the problem for some time now. Breakdown's symptoms were all incredibly general and Knock Out's manuals covered emergency field medicine more than diagnostics, but the reading he'd been doing of late had still given him a few ideas.

"I know. Take a seat," he said, patting the medslab in invitation and then turning to pick up a datapad from a rack of them built into the wall. When he turned back with the device in his hands, Breakdown had obliged him. He'd heard the bigger mech moving closer, of course, and he'd known that the medslab was a lot closer to him than the far wall—but actually having the big mech within arm's reach suddenly made Knock Out hesitate.

If Breakdown was in arm's reach of him, then he was also in arm's reach of Breakdown.

But the mech was relaxed against the slab, his engine rumbling at low idle and his huge hands folded placidly across his midsection. There was no sign of aggression or hostility on his face as he watched Knock Out. His alarm subroutines still murmured 'caution', but even his hyper-sensitive systems couldn't find anything he needed to be cautious of.

He forced himself to close the distance between them, offering Breakdown the datapad. "Do you recognize this?" he asked.

Breakdown glanced at it with indifferent curiosity, but made no move to take it. "It's… a pad?"

"It's your medical dossier, actually," Knock Out said. "I took the liberty of, ah, liberating it when we found that case of them in among the medbay equipment, but I haven't looked at it yet. I wanted to get your permission first."

"Oh." Breakdown blinked at him, taken aback. "Uh, sure. Go ahead. What're you lookin' for?"

"Spark-RIGs." It was an abbreviation on the full technical name for the spark-resonance imagining graphics; Breakdown, nodding, seemed to know what he meant.

"You think something's wrong with my spark?"

Knock Out held up a single finger, wordlessly bidding Breakdown to patience. "Possibly. I want to check your baselines and take a few scans before I say anything for sure."

"Yeah, all right." Settling back against the slab, Breakdown bobbed his head at Knock Out. "Go ahead and do what you need."

Setting the pad aside to boot up, Knock Out brought one of his medical scanners online, swinging the unwieldy device into place over Breakdown. Spark resonance scans were a fairly standard diagnostic procedure, and didn't take long at all. There were a few moments of humming and clicking from the scanning apparatus, a few more of near-silence while the computer inside the machine processed the data, and then the results were compiling. Knock Out transferred the completed graphic to the maintenance bay's main terminal, then connected the datapad to it as well and superimposed the baseline data over the new graph.

The disparity between the two was significant enough that he purged his vents in shock.

"What'd you find, doc?" Breakdown asked from behind him. With a creak of metal, the bigger grounder sat up on the slab; when Knock Out looked back at him, Breakdown was craning to see the screen over his shoulder.

Stepping out of the way, Knock Out turned to face Breakdown. Spreading his hands, he said, "It's definitely your spark."

With another protesting groan of metal, Breakdown swung his legs over the side of the slab and sat on the edge. Leaning forward, he squinted at the composite spark-RIG on the screen. "What am I lookin' at?"

Knock Out indicated one of the squiggling lines on the graph. "This is the baseline reading of your spark resonance that I got from your dossier," he said. Next, he indicated the other line on the screen, which unevenly overlapped the first. "This is the reading I just took—that is, this is the Icurrent/I frequency of your spark's resonance."

"They're different," Breakdown said.

"They're very different." The major peaks and valleys of the two graphs roughly corresponded, but all the little jigs up and jags down were at different amplitudes, sometimes widely separated. Some small variance in the frequency was normal, especially if the baseline readings were old, but this was far more than just 'some small variance'.

"So what's it mean?" Breakdown asked. He sat up straighter on the slab, clasping his hands between his thighs. "What's wrong with my spark?"

"I'm not actually sure anything's _wrong_ with your spark, actually," Knock Out said slowly. "No, I know how it looks—bear with me and I'll explain. You remember being a newspark, hm?"

"Doesn't everybody?" Breakdown asked, eyeing him uncertainly.

"Then I'm sure you remember what it was like in the very beginning, the first few orns after you woke up in your protoform. The clumsiness, the way you couldn't entirely trust the input from your sensors—"

"You mean the newspark stumbles," Breakdown said, impatient with the apparent diversion. "What about 'em?"

"Newspark stumbles are symptomatic of the fact that a new spark and its new chassis aren't used to each other yet. Your spark has to calibrate to your chassis to function in it efficiently. That's why there's usually an adjustment period after any major physical upgrade—your body interacts with its environment differently after a big change, and your spark has to readjust to that. It's an echo of the newspark stumbles."

"I… I remember staggering around like a newspark for a while after we all got our combiner upgrades, actually," Breakdown offered after thinking about it for a moment. "We all did. It was really annoying—all of us wanted to get right to work learnin' how to be Menasor, but they wouldn't even let us start doing the combining simulations until we could walk straight again. It took forever."

Folding his arms over his chest, Knock Out leaned against the casing of the terminal and looked intently at Breakdown. "Tell me," he said, choosing his words with care, "did you and the others, ah, initiate your sparkbond at the same time as the physical upgrade process?"

"We did, actually." Breakdown said. "How'd you know?"

"It's not just physical changes that can affect the spark/chassis interface," Knock Out said. "Changes to the spark can have an influence too. Like—"

Breakdown finished the thought for him. "Like sparkbonds?" He scratched at the plating over his spark chamber, frowning a little. Knock Out wondered if he even realized he was doing it.

"Like sparkbonds." Pushing off from the terminal, Knock Out twisted and indicated the image on the screen once more. "You suffered a multiple-sparkbond severance when you lost the rest of your team," he said quietly, "and you can see here the effect it's had on the frequency of your spark. I think this is why you'd been struggling with poor coordination lately—your spark's resonance has changed so much that it has to recalibrate to your body."

Purging his vents in a slow sigh, Breakdown scrubbed one big hand wearily over his face. "Makes sense," he murmured. He looked up, meeting Knock Out's optics. "You sure about this, doc?"

"I'm…fairly sure," Knock Out said. "I'll admit that sparkwork is not my, ah, specialty, but this seems fairly straightforward. We can probably get the doctors on Chaar to confirm it, but by the time we get there you ought to be mostly over it, and that would be confirmation enough."

Breakdown stared at him for a moment longer, then gave a little shrug and looked away. "Works for me," he said. With a thud, he pushed himself off the slab and stood. "Thanks, doc."

"My pleasure." Knock Out saved the new data from the scan into Breakdown's medical dossier, disconnecting the datapad a minute later. He turned and held it out once more to the bigger mech. "This is yours, I believe."

"Keep it," Breakdown said, waving the pad away. "You said there's a chance this might not be what's wrong, right? So keep it—in case you need it."

Folding the datapad back to his chest, Knock Out nodded. "As you wish," he murmured.

Tossing him an informal salute, Breakdown stepped around the medslab and headed for the door. Knock Out watched his broad back as he went—which meant that Breakdown caught him staring when he turned around in the doorway.

"Hey doc?"

"Ah—ah, yes?"

"Your shoulder pauldron," he said, nodding at where it rested on the counter. "I know those are pretty hard to get on. D'you think you'll need a hand?"

"I've got it under control, thank you," Knock Out said automatically, not even thinking about the words before he said them. It was a default response. He made a rule of doing his own repairs and maintenance—partly because he didn't trust anyone but himself with the functioning of his body, partly because so few mechs out here knew what they were doing, and partly because he didn't like being indebted for the assistance.

Breakdown's willingness to take instruction and surprisingly deft hands were not a compelling reason to discard a rule that had served him well.

So why, as Breakdown nodded and turned away and exited the maintenance bay with a little wave, did he find himself regretting that he'd sent the other mech away without even considering the offer?

"Good luck," Breakdown had called as the door closed behind him.

_I'm going to need it,_ Knock Out thought as he picked up his imager again—but it wasn't the procedure that was on his mind.


End file.
